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d)c  i^tjstor^  of  American  2vt 


THE   HISTORY   OF 


AMERICAN    PAINTING 


BY 


SAMUEL    ISHAM 

ASSOCIATE   OF   THE    NATIONAL   ACADEMY   OF    DESIGN,    MEMBER   OF 
THE    SOCIETY   OF   AMERICAN    ARTISTS 


IF/T//   TIVELVE   FULL-PAGE   PHOTOGRAVURES  AND    ONE   HUNDRED 
AND    TWENTY-ONE  ILLUSTRATLONS  IN   THE    TEXT 


THE    MACMILLAN     COMPANY 

LONDON  :   MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Ltd. 

1905 

All  7-ights  reserved 


145971 


Copyright,  1905, 
By  the    M  ACM  ill  an   COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.     Published  November,  1905. 


J.  S.   Cusbitig  &  Co.  —  Berivick  &  Smith  Co. 
Norivood,  Mass.,   U.S.A. 


EDITOR'S    NOTE 

This  series  of  books  brings  together  for  the  first  time  the 
materials  for  a  history  of  American  art.  Heretofore  there  have 
been  attempts  to  narrate  some  special  period  or  feature  of  our 
artistic  development,  but  the  narrative  has  never  been  consecu- 
tive or  conclusive.  The  present  volumes  begin  with  colonial 
times  and  bring  the  record  down  to  1906.  They  are  intended 
to  cover  the  graphic,  the  plastic,  the  illustrative,  the  musical,  and 
the  architectural  arts,  and  to  recite  the  results  in  each  depart- 
ment historically  and  critically.  That  the  opinions  ventured 
should  be  authoritative  the  preparation  of  each  volume  has  been 
placed  in  the  hands  of  an  expert  —  one  who  practises  the  craft 
whereof  he  writes.  The  series  is  therefore  a  history  of  American 
art  written  from  the  artist's  point  of  view,  and  should  have  special 
value  for  that  reason. 

The  present  volume,  "  The^  History  of  American  Painting,"  is 
the  third  in  the  series  and  has  been  preceded  by  histories  of 
American  Sculpture  and  Music.  It  is  to  be  followed  shortly  by 
"The  History  of  American  Illustration,  Engraving,  and  Etching" 
and  by  "  The   History  of  American  Architecture." 

November,  1905. 


CONTENTS 


Introduction 

CHAPTER 

I.  Thk  Primitives 

II.  Coi'Lr:v  AND  HIS  Work 

III.  Career  of  Benjamin  West 

IV.  Early  Pupils  of  West  in  London  . 
V.  Stuart  and  Trumbull 

VI.  Allston,  Malbone.  and  Vaxderlyn 

VII.  Last  Pupils  of  West 

VIII.  Decline  of  the  English  Influence 

IX.  Rise  of  a  Native  School 

X.  New  York  becomes  the  Art  Centre 

XI.  Figure  Painting  in  New  York 

XII.  Beginnings  of  Landscape  Painting 

XIII.  The  Hudson  River  School 

XIV.  Culmination  of  Early  Landscape  School 
XV.  P'igure  and  Portrait  Paintinc;  before  the  Civil 

XVI.  Increase  of  French  Influence 

XVII.  La  Faroe  and  Whistler 

XVIII.  Figure  Painters  of  the  Sixties  and  Seventies 

XIX.  The  New  Movement  .... 

XX.  The  Society  of  American  Artists 

XXI.  American  Painters  living  in  Europe    . 

XXII.  American  Artists  in  London  . 

XXIII.  Recent  Landscape  Painting  in  America 

XXIV.  Recent  Figure  Painting  in  America 
XXV.  Recent  Figure  Paintinc;  (continued)     . 

.XXVI.  The  Modern  Portrait  Painters     . 

XXVII.  Recent  Mural  Decorations 

XXVIII.  Conclusion 

(General  Bibliography 

Index  of  Painters'  Names 


War 


PAGE 
XV 


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40 

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85 

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120 
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160 
182 
202 
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232 

255 
271 
297 
316 
341 
359 

i>n 
397 
418 
429 

463 
491 

513 

538 
561 

565 
569 


PHOTOGRAVURES 


I.     Stuart.     Gibbs-Channing:  Washington 


Frontispiece 


II.  Copley.     Mrs.  Ford 

III.  Trumhull.     Battle  of  Bunker  Hill    . 

IV.  Morse.     Mrs.  De  Forest    . 
V.  DuRAND.     Landscape 

VI.  Inxess.     Autumn  Oaks 

\\\.  Whistler.     Portrait  of  Artist's  Mother 

VIII.  Chase.     Portrait        .... 

IX.  Sargent.     Mrs.  Ian  Hamilton  . 

X.  Davies.     Children  Dancing 

XI.  Brush.     Mother  and  Child 

XII.  Blashfield.     Decoration 


FACING  PAGE 
19 
85 

120 
213 

316 

359 
418 

463 
491 

538 


ILLUSTRATIONS    IN   TEXT 


FIGfRE 

1.  Illustration  from  l)e  Bry's  Voyai^es  . 

2.  Illustration  from  Champlain"s  I'oyaj^es 

3.  Elizabeth  Paddy  Wexsley.     (Example  of 

4.  Smvbert.     Family  of  Bishop  Berkeley 

5.  Blackburn.     Joshua  Warner 

6.  Pelham.     Engraving  of  Cotton  Mather 

7.  Copley.     John  Hancock 

8.  Copley.     Mrs.  Scott 

9.  Copley.     Family  Group 

10.  Stuart.     Portrait  of  Benjamin  West 

1 1 .  West.     Death  of  Wolfe 

12.  West.     Death  on  the  Pale  Horse   . 

13.  Pratt.     American  Academy  . 

14.  C.  W.  Peale.     Washington  . 

15.  C.  W.  Peale.     Portrait  of  the  Painter 

16.  DuNL.AP.     Artist  showing  Picture  to  Parents 

17.  Earle.     Mrs.  Benjamin  Tallmadge 

18.  Stuart.     Elizabeth  Beale  Bordley 

19.  Stu.art.     General  Knox 

20.  Stuart.     Frances  Cadwalader  (Lady  Erskine 

21.  Neagle.     Portrait  of  Stuart  . 

22.  Trumbull.     Governor  Clinton 

23.  Allston.     The  Prophet  Jeremiah  . 

24.  Allston.     Spanish  Girl 
jMalbone.     Mrs.  Gulian  C.  Verplanck 

25.- James  Peale.     Christopher  Greenup 
vFraser.     Mary  Theodosia  Ford 

26.  Vanderlyn.     Ariadne   . 

27.  Leslie.     Sancho  Panza  and  the  Duchess 

28.  Newton.     Yorick  and  the  Grisette 

29.  Morse.     Lafayette 

30.  Waldo.     Rev.  Dr.  Gardiner  Spring 

31.  Jarvis.     Henry  Clay 

32.  Sully.     Dr.  Samuel  Coates    . 

33.  Sully.     Mrs.  John  Ridgely    . 

34.  Harding.     John  Randolph  of  Roanoke 

35.  Harding.     Mrs.  Daniel  Webster   . 


earlv 


work) 


PAGE 

6 

8 

10 

12 

15 
21 

27 
31 
35 
42 
48 

54 
60 

65 

70 

75 
77 
82 

87 
91 
95 
99 
106 
III 

"5 
"5 
115 

118 
123 
128 
131 
139 
145 
149 

155 
161 
167 


Xll 


ILLUSTRATIONS    IX    TEXT 


36. 
Zl- 
38. 

39- 
40. 

41. 
42. 

43- 
44- 

45- 
46. 

47- 
48. 
49. 
50. 

51- 

52. 

53- 
54- 
55- 
56. 

57- 
58. 

59- 
60. 
61. 
62. 

63- 
64. 
65. 
66. 
67. 
68. 
69. 

-JO. 

7'- 
72. 

73- 
74- 
75- 
76. 

77- 
78. 

79- 


Alexander.     Mrs.  Fletcher  Webster 

Neagle.     Pat  Lyons  the  Blacksmith 

INM.A.X.     Martin  \'an  IJuren     . 

IxMAN.     Mumble  the  Peg 

Ingh.\m.     The  Flower  Girl 

Mount.     The  Goose  Raffle     . 

Mount.     Music  hath  Charms 

Woodville.     Reading  the  News    . 

Doughty.     River  Glimpse 

DuRAND.     James  Madison 

DuRAND.     In  the  Woods 

Cole.     E.xpulsion  from  Eden 

Cole.     Roman  Aqueduct 

Kensett.     White  Mountain  Scenery 

Whittredge.     The  Broolc     . 

Church.     Cayamlje 

Bierstadt.     Yosemite  \'alley 

MoRAN.     Solitude  .... 

Hart.     The  Adirondacks 

Inness.     Delaware  Valley 

WVANT.      Broad  Silent  Valley 

Martlx.     Lake  Sandford 

Martlv.     View  on  the  Seine 

GiFFORD.     Landscape     . 

Elliott.     Governor  Bouck    . 

Healy.     Webster  replying  to  Hayne 

Huntington.     Mercy's  Dream 

P.A.GE.     Mrs.  Page  .... 

Gray.     Greek  Lovers 

Leutze.     Washington  crossing  the  Delaware 

Vedder.     Eclipse  of  the  Sun 

Coleman.     Twilight  and  Poppies  . 

Hunt.     The  Bathers 

L.A.  Farge.     Ascension  of  Christ    . 

La   Farge.     Watson  Memorial  Wind(nv 

Whistler.     Little  Rose  of  Lyme  Regis 

Johnson.     Old  Kentucky  Home 

Guy.     Making  a  Train    . 

Brown.     Sympathy 

BouGHTOx.     Pilgrims  going  to  Church 

Weir,  John  F.     Forging  the  Shaft 

Henry.     On  the  Way  Home 

Homer.     The  Life  Line 

Homer.     Winter    .... 


ILLUSTRATIONS    IX    TEXT 


Xlll 


FIGURE 

80.  DrvENF.cK.     Turkisli  Page   . 

81.  SiiiKLAW.     Figures 

82.  Weir.  J.   Alukx.     Rose  Pink  Podice 

83.  Fuller.     Nydia   .... 

84.  Ryder.     The  Flying  Dutchman    . 

85.  Stewart.     Hunt  Pall  . 

86.  Danxat.      Quartette      . 

87.  Melchers.     Portrait     . 

88.  Harrlsox.     The  Wave 

89.  Cassatt.     Mother  and  Child 

90.  Millet.     Between  Two  Fire.s 

91.  Abbey.     Mariana 

92.  Hamiltox.     Hon.  Richard  Vaux 

93.  Sargext.     Henry  G.  Marcjuand  . 

94.  Taber.     Mt.  Mansfield  in  Winter 

95.  JoxES.  H.  BoLTOx.     Spring 

96.  Ranger.     Mason's  Island  Classic 

97.  Twacht.max.     Snow  Scene  . 

98.  Hassa.m.     Landscape    . 

99.  Tryon.     Early  Morning,  September 
100.  OCHTMAN.     Autumn  Sunrise 
loi.  Thayer.     A  \'irgin 

102.  Tarbell      a  Girl  Crocheting 

103.  Bexsox.     In  the  Spruce  Woods    . 

104.  Reid.     Fleur  de  Lys 

105.  Dewixg.     The  Spinet  . 

106.  Cox.     Hope  and  Memory 

107.  Burroughs.     Ariadne 

108.  Blu.m.     Street  Scene  in  Tokio 

109.  Walker,  Horatio.     Oxen  Drinking 
no.  Hovexdex.     Breaking  Home  Ties 

111.  Hexri.     Young  Woman  in  Black 

112.  Alexaxder.  J.  W.     A  Portrait    . 

113.  Eakixs.     The  Cello  Player   . 

114.  Beaux,  Miss  Cecilia.     Children  of  R.  W. 

115.  LOCKWOOD.     Portrait  of  John  La  P\arge 

116.  Porter.     Portrait  of  a  Boy  . 

117.  Wiles.     Mrs.  and  Miss  Wiles 
/Emmet,  Miss  L.  F.     Miniature  Portrait 

118.-,  Fuller,  Mrs.     Miniature  Portrait 
^  Hills.  Miss.     Portrait  of  Persis  Blairs 

119.  Sargent.     Dogma  of  the  Redemption 

120.  Walker,  H.  O.     Lyric  Poetry     . 

121.  SiMMOxs.     January        .... 


lilder 


PACE 

365 

370 

379 
385 
391 
399 

402 
405 
409 

413 
421 

425 
429 

435 
441 

443 
446 

448 
451 
455 
459 
465 
469 
473 
477 
481 
485 
490 
494 
497 
503 
507 
512 
515 
519 
523 
527 

531 
535 
535 
535 
545 
551 
557 


INTRODUCTION 

As  the  United  States  of  America  is  the  youngest  of  the  great 
nations  of  the  world,  but  recently  come  to  full  rank  among  them, 
so  the  development  of  the  arts  within  it  has  been  short  and  has 
not  yet  reached  completeness.  The  whole  course  of  American 
painting  from  its  beginnings  down  to  the  present  extends  over  no 
great  space  of  time,  and  a  few  long  artist-lives  span  it  in  a  surprising 
manner.  One  does  not  have  to  be  beyond  middle  age  to  remember 
Professor  S.  F.  B.  Morse,  yet  Morse  was  a  student  under  West,  the 
almost  legendary  founder  of  the  craft,  who  got  his  first  colors  from 
the  painted  savages  of  the  forest ;  and  West,  moreover,  was  still  living 
when  Daniel  Huntington,  even  now  painting  among  us,  was  born. 
Yet  the  course  of  our  art  though  short  has  not  been  unbroken.  It 
has  not  the  interest  of  organic  growth,  of  logical  development,  but 
has  continually  deserted  one  set  of  models  to  follow  another,  retaining 
at  each  change  hardly  any  tradition  of  its  former  ideals.  In  general, 
however,  it  divides  itself  with  sufficient  distinctness  into  three  periods, 
which  may  be  characterized  as  the  Colonial,  the  Provincial,  and  the 
Cosmopolitan. 

/^  At  first  such  art  as  the  struggling  colonies  possessed  came  from 
visiting  English  craftsmen  usually  of  the  most  unskilful  type..'  Soon, 
however,  they  had  disciples  and  rivals  among  the  native-born,  of 
whom  some  of  the  most  promising  and  enterprising  went  to  Eng- 
land to  perfect  themselves.  Two  or  three  of  these  were  men  of 
quite  unexpected  ability.  A  recent  critic  has  said  that  the  best  were 
but  second-rate  English  painters ;  but  they  were  second-rate  only  if 
Reynolds  and  Gainsborough  be  placed  in  a  class  by  themselves  as 
alone  first-rate.  With  the  best  of  the  others  Copley  and  Stuart  are 
substantially  on  an  equality,  and  West,  though  now  antiquated,  was 
an  important  influence  in  the  art  of  his  time.  That  they  were  Eng- 
lish painters,  however,  cannot  be  well    denied.     Copley  and  West 


xvi  INTRODUCTION 

remained  to  the  end  British  subjects, -and  the  long  line  of  American 
students  who  passed  through  the  studio  of  West  returned  home  with 
English  methods  and  English  ideals.    / 

The  intellectual  dependence  on  the  mother  country  naturally 
lasted  long  after  the  political  ties  were  broken ;  but  separation,  the 
social  changes  resulting  from  the  change  of  government  and  the 
ruder,  more  isolated  life  incident  to  the  development  of  the  interior 
of  the  country,  weakened  the  influence  of  English  art  until  it  slowly 
disappeared.  In  its  place  came  all  manner  of  strivings  of  native 
talent  to  satisfy  the  aesthetic  cravings  of  native  taste,  crude  at  first 
but  gradually  improving  under  the  influence  of  DLisseldorf,  Rome, 
and  later  of  Paris.  One  interesting  result  of  the  movement  was  the 
development  of  a  native  landscape  school,  and  it  finally  culminated 
in  a  few  men  whose  original  talent,  strengthened  by  adverse  sur- 
roundings, has  not  been  suipassed  since. 

With  the  conclusion  of  the  Civil  War  came  another  change. 
The  succeeding  generation  of  artists  departed  for  Europe  almost  in  a 
body.  They  studied  in  the  best  ateliers  of  the  Old  World,  side  by 
side  with  the  men  who  are  now  the  leaders  of  European  art;  they 
contended  with  them  for  the  school  prizes  and  later  show^ed  pictures 
alongside  of  theirs  in  the  exhibitions;  they  accepted  European  stand- 
ards of  workmanship  and  also  to  a  great  extent  European  tastes  and 
interests.  They  no  longer  reflected  the  culture,  the  likes  and  dislikes 
of  their  compatriots  as,  in  spite  of  foreign  travel  or  training,  the 
elder  generation  had  done.  They  appeared  almost  as  aliens.  Even 
after  their  return,  when  they  had  begun  half  unconsciously  to  reflect 
native  ideas  in  their  work,  they  still  tested  it  by  comparison  with 
what  was  being  done  elsewhere.  In  fact,  American  painting  had 
become  an  integral  part  of  the  painting  of  the  world.  The  methods, 
the  ideals,  the  achievements  of  Europe  were  all  open  to  the  Ameri- 
can artist  who,  according  to  his  temperament  and  ability,  chose  or 
rejected  what  he  w^ould.     The  old  period  of  isolation  was  passed. 

It  is  along  these  latter  lines  that  our  painting  is  developing, 
adapting  itself  to  native  needs  and  to  a  new-found  native  taste  with 
a  rapidity  that  precludes  any  adequate  record.  The  amount  of 
space  devoted  to  men  like  West  or  Chester  Harding  in  the  present 
volume  may  seem  entirely  disproportionate  when   compared  with 


INTRODUCTION  xvii 

that  given  to  living  men  of  equal  or  greater  abilities ;  but  even  if  the 
earlier  men  who  are  comparatively  few  in  number  were  completely 
omitted,  the  space  gained  would  suffice  no  better  for  individual 
criticism  of  the  men  of  to-day.  Moreover,  a  history  of  American 
painting  should  have  its  importance  not  through  its  description 
of  isolated  men  or  their  works,  but  as  a  record  of  the  growth  of  the 
country  in  intelligence  and  culture;  as  a  part,  in  fact,  of  that 
History  of  Taste  which  still  awaits  its  author.  The  lives  of  the 
early  painters  have  consequently  been  given  in  some  detail  so  that 
it  may  be  seen  not  only  what  manner  of  men  they  were  but  also 
how  they  were  formed  by  their  surroundings  and  the  sort  of  public 
to  which  they  catered. 

For  the  same  reason  an  attempt  has  been  made  to  note  the  rise 
and  growth  of  the  different  art  organizations  and  their  social  and 
intellectual  character,  and  also  to  give  some  record  of  the  foreign 
influences  that  have  been  brought  to  bear  upon  them.  The  artists 
have  changed  their  ideals  but  not  accidentally  or  arbitrarily.  Even 
when  some  of  them  seemed  to  be  opposing  the  taste  of  their  coun- 
trymen, they  were  in  fact  but  aiding  it  in  a  necessary  and  inevitable 
advance.  It  is  this  development  of  painting  and  of  the  appreciation 
of  painting  which  it  has  been  the  aim  of  this  book  to  trace,  and 
mention  of  the  lives  and  works  of  individual  painters  has  been  made 
as  they  seemed  to  illustrate  such  development.  The  ungrateful  and 
impossible  task  of  recording  the  names  and  works  of  every  meritorious 
painter  has  not  been  attempted. 


HISTORY  OF  AMERICAN   PAINTING 


CHAPTER    I 

THE  PRIMITIVES 

American  Painting  entirely  derived  from  Europe.  —  Artists  among  the  Early 
Explorers.  —  Le  Moyne.  —  Joannes  With.  —  Culture  of  the  French  Superior 
IN  THE  Beginning  to  that  of  the  English.  —  Conditions  of  Early  Colonial 
Life.  —  Some  Pictures  brought  over.  —  Early  Painters.  —  Smybert.  —  Green- 
wood. —  ThEUS.  —  FeKE.  —  KiLBURN.  —  BLACKBURN 

The  fundamental  and  mastering  fact  about  American  painting 
is  that  it  is  in  no  way  native  to  America,  but  is  European  painting 
imported,  or  rather  transplanted,  to  America,  and  there  cultivated 
and  developed ;  and  even  that  not  independently,  but  with  constant 
reference  to  the  older  countries,  first  one  nation  or  school  having  a 
preponderating  influence,  then  another.  There  is  no  local  tradition 
or  influence ;  no  ancient  archaic  style  to  be  vaguely  felt  even  in  the 
latest  and  most  varied  achievements.  The  Indians  of  the  Atlantic 
seaboard  were  skilled  in  war  and  hunting,  some  of  them  were  wise 
in  council,  sound  reasoners,  and  with  a  striking  and  picturesque  elo- 
quence, but  in  all  that  touched  art,  even  of  the  rudimentary  savage 
type,  they  were  far  behind  their  brethren  of  Mexico  and  Peru. 
Even  had  they  been  equally  advanced,  it  is  doubtful  if  their  carvings 
and  paintings  would  have  left  perceptible  traces.  The  immigrants 
who  permanently  occupied  the  country  were  not  in  a  frame  of  mind 
to  learn  from  the  savages,  nor  were  they,  in  most  of  the  English 
colonies,  greatly  interested  in  anything  pertaining  to  sculpture  or 
painting. 

With  the  French  colonists  it  was  different;  they  were  far 
more  advanced  in  all  that  touched  the  refinements  of  life,  and  their 
leaders  often  were  at  home  in  the  highly  cultivated  French  court, 
where  all  the  arts  were  encouraged  to  the  utmost.  The  French 
colonies  were  sent  out  more  or  less  under  court  patronage  and  for 
the  glory  of  the  French  name.  Their  promoters  desired,  as  a  rule, 
to  enrich  themselves,  but    also  to   gain    renown,  to  enlighten    the 

3 


4  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

world,  to  found  states  which  should  reflect  the  glories  of  France. 
They  were  interested  in  the  beauties  of  the  country,  in  its  people, 
and  in  its  fauna.  The  large  intellectual  interests  of  the  pioneers  of 
Canada  are  in  strong  contrast  to  the  narrow,  incurious  Puritan  mind. 
Thoreau  describes  Governor  Winthrop's  surmises  about  the  great 
lake  and  the  hideous  swamps  about  it  where  the  Connecticut  and 
the  Potomac  took  their  rise,  and  his  recording  among  the  memo- 
rable events  the  expedition  of  Darbey  F'ield  (an  Irishman,  which 
accounts  for  his  enterprise),  who  went  to  the  top  of  the  White  Hill, 
from  whence  he  saw  eastward  "what  he  judged  to  be  the  great 
lake  which  the  Canada  River  comes  out  of ; "  and  Thoreau  compares 
these  wild  conjectures  with  the  adventures  and  discoveries  of  Cham- 
plain,  of  which  "  we  have  a  minute  and  faithful  account,  giving  facts 
and  dates  as  well  as  charts  and  soundings,  all  scientific  and  French- 
manlike, with  scarcely  one  fable  or  traveller's  story." 

One  French  expedition,  and  that  of  the  earliest,  was  even  supplied 
with  an  official  artist,  whose  adventure  merits  some  notice,  as  he  was 
the  first  professional  painter  of  the  New  World.  In  1565  that  pic- 
turesque moral  character,  Sir  John  Hawkins,  had  for  the  second  time 
captured  a  cargo  of  negroes  on  the  African  coast  and  transported 
and  sold  them  into  slavery  in  the  Spanish  West  Indies,  all  to  his 
great  profit,  though  to  the  scandal  of  the  more  conservative  of  his 
countrymen.  Scandal,  not  because  the  sacking  of  negro  villages 
was  considered  in  any  way  reprehensible,  but  Spain  claimed  and  was 
generally  allowed  a  monopoly  of  commerce  with  the  Western  con- 
tinent, and  Sir  John  had  been  infringing  on  her  preserves  to  the 
extent  of  attacking  the  towns  and  forcing  them  to  permit  him  to 
trade.  On  his  way  home,  after  disposing  of  his  live  stock,  he  put 
in  at  the  mouth  of  the  St.  John's  River  in  Florida  for  water,  and 
found  there  a  French  colony  in  great  distress.  It  was  the  far- 
sighted  Admiral  Coligny  who,  at  the  beginning  of  the  Huguenot 
troubles  in  France,  had  furthered  the  idea  of  planting  a  Protestant 
state  in  the  New  World.  One  futile  attempt  had  been  made  in 
Brazil.  The  Florida  one  was  undertaken  a  few  years  later,  under 
the  leadership  of  Jean  Ribaut,  who  had  returned  to  France,  leaving 
his  lieutenant,  Laudonniere,  in  command;  and  his  party,  who  were 
most  unfitted  for  the  role  of  colonists,  being  mostly  soldiers,  young 


Tlir:    PRIMITIVES  5 

Huguenot  nobles,  adventurers,  and  everytliing  except  farmers,  had 
come,  through  improvidence,  discontent,  rebellion,  and  gold-seeking, 
to  a  point  where  famine  stared  them  in  the  face. 

Hawkins  treated  them  with  kindness,  furnished  them  with 
provision,  and  left  them  a  ship  for  their  return  to  r>ance,  taking 
Laudonniere's  bill  for  payment.  He  had  hardly  left  and  they 
were  still  waiting  for  a  favorable  wind  to  embark  when  Ribaut 
came  with  relief,  and  the  settlement  was  in  the  way  of  becoming 
permanent ;  but  within  a  week  from  Ribaut  s  arrival  another  fleet 
appeared.  They  had  been  betrayed  to  Spain  by  the  court  party 
at  home  and  the  Spanish  admiral,  Pedro  Menendez  de  Aviles,  had 
been  sent  out  against  them.  He  slaughtered  the  whole  colony  with- 
out quarter,  cruelly  and,  the  French  claim,  treacherously.  A  hand- 
ful alone  escaped,  among  them  Jacques  le  Moyne  de  Morgues,  the 
artist  of  the  expedition.  Le  Moyne  had  been  left  with  the  sick  and 
disabled,  and  on  the  Spanish  attack  fled  to  the  woods,  from  whence 
he  saw  a  comrade  (who,  in  desperation,  had  given  himself  up  to  the 
Spaniards)  hewn  to  pieces  before  his  eyes.  He  finally  succeeded  in 
reaching  the  coast,  and  was  picked  up  by  one  of  the  small  vessels 
which  had  escaped  and  was  brought  to  England.  It  is  interesting  to 
add  that  two  years  afterward  a  simple  gentleman  of  Mont-de-Marsan, 
Dominique  de  Gourgues,  neither  powerful  nor  rich,  but  fired  with 
wrath  at  the  cruelty  of  the  Spaniards  and  the  apathy  of  the  court, 
raised  at  his  own  costs  three  small  vessels  and  a  handful  of  men, 
sailed  for  Florida,  enlisted  the  Indians  (who  were  friendly  to  the 
French),  and  after  succeeding  in  his  desperate  venture  and  com- 
pletely exterminating  the  Spanish  colony,  returned  home,  leaving 
the  ruins  of  the  settlement  to  the  aborigines. 

In  the  second  of  the  Voyages,  published  by  De  Bry,  in  1591, 
may  be  found  the  Brevis  Navj^atio  of  Le  Moyne's  experiences,  illus- 
trated with  copper  plates  by  De  Bry  after  his  drawings.  The  engrav- 
ing is  of  good  commercial  quality,  but  there  is  not  much  art  in  the 
compositions  nor  (though  figures  of  turkeys  and  alligators  give  some 
local  color)  is  there  much  to  distinguish  the  country  and  its  inhabit- 
ants from  Thracia  or  Cathay  as  shown  in  similar  publications  of 
the  time.  Even  the  portrait  from  life  of  the  great  King  Saturiona, 
except  for  his  scanty  attire  and  plentiful  painting  or  tattooing,  shows 


6  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

no  racial  characteristics ;  and  the  same  criticism  may  be  made  on  the 
illustrations  to  the  first  of  De  Bry's  Voyages,  which,  although  pub- 
lished earlier,  had  reference  to  a  later  expedition,  Raleigh's  Virginia 
venture  of  1585.  The  artist,  Joannes  With,  presumably  from  Ger- 
many or  the  Netherlands,  was  sent  out  with  the  parties  by  the  pub- 
lisher as  a  special  artist  {eitis  rci  gratia  in  illam  provinciam  annis 


Columnam  a  Pracfccto  prima  navigationclocatam 
vencrantur  Floriden  fes. 


Fig.    I.  —  Illustration  from  De  Bry's    Voyages. 


i§8^-i§88  misso\  but  though  all  was  "dilligently  observed  and 
expressed  to  the  life,"  yet  the  series  of  men  and  women  of  the  Indian 
tribes  has  an  addition  of  half  a  dozen  or  so  of  plates  of  ancient  Brit- 
ons, which  the  painter  asserts  are  much  the  same  thing,  and  which 
certainly  seem  the  same  in  his  illustrations.  These  works  were  fol- 
lowed in  the  succeeding  century  by  many  others  calculated  to  grat- 
ify the  interest  excited  in  the  strange  New  World,  containing  many 
illustrations  of  the  cities,  peoples,  animals,  and  plants  of  America, 


THE    PRIMITIVES  7 

often  done  by  men  who  had  been  on  the  spot ;  but,  apart  from  the 
fact  that  the  Enghsli  settlements  got  far  less  attention  than  the  West 
Indies  and  Brazil,  the  interest  was  mainly  scientific,  and  the  artists 
had  no  more  real  connection  with  the  art  of  the  countries  they  visited 
than  the  explorers  who  to-day  illustrate  the  Congo  basin  or  Man- 
churia. Few  of  the  draughtsmen  were  English,  and  if  we  wish  traces 
of  a  taste  for  art,  we  must  turn  to  the  French  rather  than  to  the 
English  settlers.  Even  before  De  Bry's  publications  in  Ramusio's 
Voyages  of  1556,  there  was  a  recognizable  view  of  Hochelaga  (later 
Montreal),  and  in  1558  there  appeared  at  Antwerp,  Thevet's  Les 
Singular itcz  de  la  France  Antartique,  which  contained  a  cut  of  a 
buffalo,  probably  from  a  drawing  by  Thevet  himself,  and  fairly  well 
done.  Later  there  appeared  another  artist  who,  though  also  an 
amateur,  was  far  better  known  than  even  Le  Moyne.  Samuel  de 
Champlain,  that  gallant,  steadfast  gentleman,  adorned  his  journal 
with  colored  pictures  of  harbors,  rivers,  animals,  blockhouses,  skir- 
mishes with  Indians  (who  shoot  their  unfortunate  victims  full  of 
arrows  until  they  look  like  porcupines),  and  other  occurrences  of 
interest,  as  may  be  seen  in  the  manuscript  preserved  in  Dieppe  to 
this  day.  Parkman  says  they  are  "  in  a  style  which  a  child  of  ten 
might  emulate,"  but  they  elucidate  the  text,  and  no  English  pioneer 
had  advanced  even  as  far  as  that. 

There  was  continually  among  the  French  explorers  of  Canada 
an  effort  toward  a  life  adorned  with  the  graces  and  refinements 
which  they  had  left  behind.  Champlain  himself,  on  his  return  from 
an  exploring  expedition,  was  welcomed  at  Port  Royale  by  a  fete 
where  Neptune  and  his  tritons,  issuing  from  beneath  an  arch 
blazoned  with  scutcheons  and  the  arms  of  France,  declaimed  a 
greeting  in  good  French  verse.  And  later  yet  the  fiery  Frontenac, 
who  in  his  early  days  in  France  had  lavished  money  and  boasted 
of  the  perfection  of  his  cuisine  and  establishment  generally,  cared 
for  the  intellectual  pleasures  of  cultivated  life  and  got  himself  into 
difficulties  with  the  clergy  through  his  masquerades  and  plays. 

But  these  incursions  into  art  left  no  permanent  results;  no  more 
did  the  portraits  of  saints  and  the  lurid  representations  of  the  suffer- 
ings of  the  damned  which  the  Jesuit  priests  carried  through  the 
wilds  to  turn  the  hearts  of  the  bloodthirsty  Hurons  to  grace,  nor  the 


8 


HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTIXG 


Other  religious  paintings  of  the  same  type  with  which  Spain  endowed 
the  churches  of  Mexico  and  Brazil. 

It  is   interesting  to  conjecture  what  might  have  been  the  result 
had   France  won  in   the  duel  for  the  possession   of    the   continent. 


DV   SIEVR  DE  CHAMPLAIK.        18-, 


NPlattcstornKS.cn  fa^on  dc 
tcnaillcs  pcut  racitre  le  ca- 


FiG.  2.  —  Illustration  from  Chami'lain's    J'oyages. 

It  is  doubtful  if  it  would  have  been  as  advantageous  artistically  as  is 
general])'  supposed,  for  the  fact  is  that  the  })ermanent  development 
of  American  art  Vv'as  through  the  h-nglish-speaking  race,  and  its 
difTficult  beginnings  were  not  among  the  cavaliers  of  the  South  nor 
the  Dutch  of  New  York,  who  might  be  expected  to  retain  some 
sympathy  with  the  decorative  side  of  life,  but  among  the  Puritans  of 


THE    PRIMITIVES  9 

Boston  and  the  Quakers  of  Philadelphia.  In  general  the  early 
colonists  brought  no  paintings  in  their  baggage  and  little  thought 
of  them  in  their  minds.  Whatever  their  aspirations,  whether  for 
freedom  of  conscience  or  for  gold  mines,  the  settlers  passed  their 
first  years  in  misery  and  squalor.  They  lived  in  hovels  dug  in  the 
sides  of  the  hills,  and  the  rude  log  hut  was  a  luxury.  A  greater 
degree  of  comfort  soon  came  in,  but  even  the  towns  were  long 
unpaved  and  poor,  although  the  accounts  vary  greatly  according  to 
the  reporter.  Thus,  in  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century,  John- 
son describes  Boston  as  "  a  city-like  Towne  crowded  on  the  Sea, 
banked  and  wharfed  out  with  great  industry  and  cost,  the  buildings 
beautifull  and  large  ;  some  fancily  set  forth  with  Brick,  Tile,  Stone 
and  Slate,  and  orderly  placed  with  comeley  Streets."  The  less  par- 
tial eyes  of  the  Old  World  Royal  Commissioners  saw  it  a  few  years 
later.  "  The  houses  generally  wooden,  their  streets  crooked,  with 
little  decency  and  no  uniformity."  There  was  a  steady  improvement 
with  time.  Brick  came  into  general  use  after  the  beginning  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  and  "  what  is  now  known  as  colonial  architecture 
gradually  developed,  some  of  its  best  examples  dating  from  about 
1720." 

This  was  written  particularly  of  Boston,  but  it  applies  equally 
well  to  the  other  cities  of  the  colonies.  Both  in  New  England  and 
Pennsylvania  religious  prejudice  was  opposed  to  most  forms  of  art, 
and  New  York  kept  to  its  traditions  as  a  trading  post  rather  than 
an  intellectual  centre.  Some  of  the  patroons  on  the  Hudson  may 
have  brought  with  them  an  ampler  culture,  at  least  it  was  so  of  the 
De  Peysters,  and  there  still  remain  portraits  of  Colonel  Abraham 
and  his  wife  which  must  have  been  painted  in  Europe  about  1700. 
Mrs.  Brown  of  Laggan,  who  was  at  the  homestead  about  1760,  re- 
ports it  well  supplied  with  canvases.  "  The  best  bedroom  was  hung 
with  family  portraits,  some  of  which  were  admirably  executed  ;  and  in 
the  eating  room  which,  by  the  bye,  was  rarely  used  for  that  purpose, 
were  some  fine  scriptural  paintings;  that  which  made  the  greatest 
impression  on  my  imagination  and  seemed  to  be  universally  admired, 
was  one  of  Esau  coming  to  demand  the  anticipated  blessing;  the  noble 
manly  figure,  and  the  anguish  expressed  on  his  comely  though  strong 
featured  countenance,  I  shall  never  forget."     Even  the  lesser  people 


lO 


HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 


among  the  Dutch  immigrants  cultivated  the  arts  to  some  extent,  as 
the  inventory  of  Jonas  Bronck,  the  shadowy  eponymous  hero  of  the 
Borough  of  the  Bronx,  Manhattan,  bears  witness.  He  was  a  sub- 
stantial burgher  but  no  patroon,  yet  he  left  eleven  pictures,  as  well 
as  a  number  of  books  and  a  Japanese  cutlass. 


^^^^^^K^^^^^^^^l 

^H 

^^^^^^^^^^^'■'  ^!^  ^^^^^H 

^^^^^1 

^^^^^^^HkL       '^     ^^^1 

^^^^H 

^^^^^^^^Kb^^  ^  ^lu      l^^l 

■ 

Br^^^ 

1 

^mim 

Bi^^,v^te#^ 

li 

l^^cA                       ^^^^^^w'"*'^ .  t  /'  '   q9^^^If^ 

-j2          ^■Hn 

flEI 

B^^H.^         ^H '-'''' )^'\iOK 

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I^^^^^I^ZHp    ^^^^tHc-v*^                '^^Al^  M               JrT 

^^^^^^^H 

^^^B^m*jL^j^^ 

Hft;^' . 

„''^.     •   -.1 

Fig.  3.  —  Ei.iZAiiKTii  Paddy  Wknsi.ky  (kxamti.e  of  early  work),  Pilgrim  Hall,  Plymoitth. 

While  such  cases  may  have  been  rare,  especially  in  the  English 
colonies,  yet  constant  intercourse  with  the  mother  country  was 
maintained,  and  the  uovernors  and  other  officials  sent  out  from  En":- 
land  brought  with  them  the  refinements  of  life  and  maintained  a 
certain  state.  There  was  a  natural  demand  for  likenesses  of  promi- 
nent i)ersons,  legislators,  or  dixines.     Portraits,  more  or  less  authentic, 


THE    PRIMITIVES 


13 


of  the  early  governors  and  worthies,  the  Winthrops,  Winslows, 
Calverts,  Mathers,  and  the  Hke,  are  still  extant,  many  painted  in  Eng- 
land, but  some  produced  in  the  colonies.  Cotton  Mather  relates  in 
his  Magnalia  how  "  Mr.  Edward  Rawson,  the  honored  Secretary  of 
the  Massachusetts  Colony,  could  not,  with  all  his  entreaties  persuade 
John  Wilson  to  have  his  picture  drawn ;  '  What !  such  a  poor  vile 
creature  as  I  am  !  Shall  my  picture  be  drawn  !  I  say  no ;  it  never 
shall,'  "  and  it  was  not,  though  "  The  limner  was  introduced  with  all 
things  ready."  Wilson  died  in  1667,  a  very  early  date  to  find  an 
artist  in  Massachusetts ;  and  the  probabilities  are  that  he  was  a  very 
bad  one,  though  his  experience  will  gain  the  sympathy  of  portrait 
painters.  Other  worthies,  however,  were  less  modest  or  showed  it 
in  a  different  way,  and  the  early  art  of  the  colonies  was  mostly  con- 
fined to  portraiture  or  to  the  painting  of  signs  and  coaches,  both 
much  more  elaborate  then  than  now.  There  were  more  practitioners 
during  the  eighteenth  century  than  is  usually  supposed,  though  they 
were  but  indifferent  workmen,  and  it  is  well-nigh  impossible  to  place 
any  names  on  the  canvases  that  survive  from  the  period  before  1750. 
Records  of  them  appear  here  and  there.  As  early  as  171 5,  John 
Watson,  a  Scotchman,  came  to  this  country  and  set  up  his  easel  at 
Perth  Amboy.  After  his  first  visit  he  returned  to  Europe  and 
brought  back  to  his  adopted  country  many  pictures,  which  with  his 
own  compositions  formed  no  inconsiderable  collection  in  point  of 
number.  He  painted  portraits  and  ideal  heads  of  kings  and  heroes, 
and  his  painting  house,  with  the  shutters  divided  into  squares  and 
decorated  with  personages  in  antique  costume,  still  remained  to 
awaken  the  childish  wonder  of  Dunlap.  He  died  at  an  advanced 
age,  and  left  a  reputation  for  lending  money  to  his  sitters  and  being 
a  usurer  and  miser. 

The  earliest  artist  whose  works  are  known  and  of  sufficient  merit 
to  warrant  serious  consideration  was  John  Smybert  (or  Smibert,  for 
he  spelled  his  name  both  ways),  who  came  to  America  in  1728  with 
Bishop  Berkeley  when  that  worthy  divine  attempted  to  start  his  col- 
lege in  Bermuda,  and  who  remained  after  the  return  of  his  friend  the 
bishop  and  settled  in  Boston,  where  "  he  married  a  woman  of  con- 
siderable fortune  "  and  resided  there  until  his  death. 

Smybert  was  really  a  fair  painter  according  to  the  English  stand- 


14  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

ards  of  his  day,  which  were  not  high,  since  he  lived  just  before  the 
briUiant  flowering  of  English  art  at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury. He  was  Scotch  by  birth,  born  in  Edinburgh,  in  1684,  and  in 
his  youth  was  apprenticed  to  a  house  painter  and  plasterer;  but  a 
taste  for  drawing  made  him  leave  the  more  mechanical  branch  of 
his  profession  and  come  to  London,  where  he  supported  life  by 
coach-painting  and  copying  old  pictures.  He  increased  his  skill  by 
studying  in  the  Academy  of  Sir  James  Thornhill,  who  was  then  the 
leading  native  artist  in  England  and  almost  the  first  to  receive  any 
public  recognition.  Sir  James  was  a  man  of  good  birth,  which  un- 
doubtedly helped  him  to  success,  and  he  decorated,  at  so  much  a 
square  yard,  staircases,  galleries,  and  ceilings,  including  the  dome  of 
St.  Paul's,  in  the  style  of  Verrio  and  the  foreigners  that  he  succeeded. 
He  was  wealthy  and  maintained  his  Academy  at  his  own  expense. 
Smybert  had  there,  for  a  fellow-student,  Hogarth,  with  whom  the 
series  of  great  English  portrait  painters  begins,  and  who  clandes- 
tinely married  Thornhill's  daughter. 

After  his  coach-painting  days,  Smybert  went,  in  171 7,  to  Italy  and 
on  his  return  set  up  as  portrait  painter  with  success  and  was  particu- 
larly patronized  by  the  "  Virtuosi "  of  London,  a  society  of  amateurs 
of  the  fine  arts,  containing  men  of  some  celebrity  like  John  Wooten, 
ThonTas  Gibson,  and  George  V^ertue.  And  he  was  also  well  known 
to  Horace  Walpole,  from  whose  anecdotes  of  painting  we  get  most 
of  our  knowledge  of  Smybert  before  he  sailed  for  America,  and  who 
regarded  his  departure  for  an  uncivilized  country,  just  when  fortune 
began  to  smile  on  him,  with  the  amused  superiority  of  a  man  of  the 
world  and  a  dilettante.  "  Smybert,"  he  says,  "  was  a  silent  and 
modest  man  who  abhorred  finesse  in  his  profession  and  was  en- 
chanted with  a  plan  which  he  thought  promised  tranquillity  and  an 
honest  subsistence  in  a  healthy  and  elysian  chmate,  and  in  spite  of 
remonstrances  engaged  with  the  Dean." 

His  most  important  work  and  his  Ijcst  is  the  picture  of  Bishop 
Berkeley  and  his  family,  now  in  the  Dining  Hall,  Yale  University, 
a  group  containing  eight  figures  suggesting  the  one  described  in 
the  Vicar  of  Wakefield  whose  dimensions  rendered  it  impossible 
to  enter  the  house  and  relegated  it  to  the  vard.  It  is  well  if 
somewhat   stififly   arranged,   the   painting   is   dry  and    hard,  and  the 


FIG.  ^.-BLACKBURN:    PORTRAIT   OF   JOSHUA   WARNER,   BOSTON    MUSEUM. 


THE   PRIMITIVES  1 7 

shadows  black  and  without  transparency,  but  the  drawing  is  good, 
and  tlie  character  of  the  different  persons  well  given,  with  a  cer- 
tain liveliness  and  animation  in  their  expression.  This,  which  is 
one  of  the  earliest  of  his  works  in  America  (he  is  said  to  have 
begun  it,  or  at  least  the  studies  for  it,  during  the  voyage),  seems 
to  have  met  with  general  approbation,  for  he  had  many  orders  and 
painted  a  long  line  of  divines,  magistrates,  and  justices  with  their, 
wives  and  children,  of  unequal  merit,  and  (although  his  reputation 
has  probably  suffered  from  the  reckless  attribution  to  him  of  the  work 
of  inferior  men)  mostly  stiff  in  pose  and  labored  in  treatment.  Yet 
his  portraits  were  by  far  the  best  executed  in  the  country  up  to  the 
time  of  his  death,  and  we  owe  him  a  debt  of  gratitude  for  the 
sincerity  with  which  he  has  preserved  for  us  the  likenesses  of  our 
early  worthies,  men  like  Jonathan  Edwards  or  John  Endicott  of 
Massachusetts,  and  the  others  who  out  of  their  unskilfully  drawn 
eyes  stare  at  us  stiffly  from  his  canvases.  Much  of  his  work  is 
preserved,  and  Perkins  gives  a  list  of  thirty-six  pictures  by  him 
which  he  considers  authentic. 

Smybert  died  in  1 751,  and  from  that  time  the  number  of  painters 
in  America  multiplied,  though  their  merit  did  not  increase.  Smy- 
bert's  son  Nathaniel  followed  his  father's  profession  and  showed 
promise,  but  died  young,  in  1756. 

John  Greenwood  was  also  a  contemporary,  and  all  over  the  colo- 
nies there  were  artists  like  Theus,  whose  name  Dunlap  has  preserved 
and  who  painted  portraits  in  South  Carolina  "certainly  as  early  as 
1750,"  and  Robert  Feke,  of  an  old  New  England  family,  who  worked 
about  the  same  time.  All  of  these  did  work  that,  without  being  of 
great  merit,  still  was  not  grotesque,  and  even  had  some  dignity  and 
beauty.  In  the  New  York  Gazette  of  July,  1754,  there  was  published 
a  notice  to  the  effect  that 

"  Lawrence   Kilburn,  Limner 

"Just  arrived  from  London  with  Capt.  Miller,  hereby  acquaints  all 
Gentlemen  and  Ladies  inclined  to  favor  him  in  having  their  pictures 
drawn,  that  he  don't  doubt  of  pleasing  them  in  taking  a  true  Like- 
ness, and  finishing  the  Drapery  in  a  proper  manner,  as  also  in  the 
Choice  of  Attitudes  suitable  to  each  Person  s  Age  and  Sex,  and  giv- 


1 8  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

ine  airreeable  satisfaction  as  he  has  heretofore  done  to  Gentlemen 
and  Ladies  in  London." 

His  notices  continued  to  appear  until  1772,  when  he  seems  to 
have  abandoned  the  practice  of  art  and  opened  a  paint  store,  selling 
among  other  items,  "  yellow  oker,  prusian  blue,  and  verdigrease," 
and  finally,  in  1775,  comes  a  notice  for  the  payment  of  debts  due  him 
to  Judith  Kilburn,  his  executrix.  Similar  notices  of  other  painters 
were  published  subsequently,  and  other  names  appear  in  the  old 
records,  some  of  them  connected  with  the  beginnings  of  West  and 
Copley ;  but  oblivion  has  swallowed  up  the  works  of  most  of  them. 

The  neglect  is  not  unmerited.  The  work  is  poor  and  without 
artistic  interest,  though  the  portraits  are  often  the  only  likenesses 
we  have  of  men  important  in  their  day,  and  the  costumes  are  amus- 
ing. Bad  as  they  are,  the  technique  usually  suggests  Continental 
work  rather  than  English,  which  is  natural,  for  English  painting  was 
hardly  begun,  and  the  wandering  craftsmen  in  America  got  what 
ideals  they  had  from  men  like  Kneller  and  Lely.  Most  of  them 
probably  learned  their  trade  before  coming  to  America,  and  renewed 
their  artistic  inspiration  from  such  prints  and  portraits  as  they  could 
get  a  sight  of.  The  general  result  was  about  what  one  might  expect 
an  unskilful  sign  painter  to  produce  when  attempting  to  copy  Sir 
Godfrey  Kneller  from  memory. 

Of  one  man  we  know  something  more.  Jonathan  B.  Black- 
burn came  to  Boston  about  1750  and  remained  some  fifteen  years. 
Mr.  Perkins  has  been  unable  to  trace  his  early  life,  but  says  that 
"  there  was  a  travelling  artist  of  the  same  name  about  a  generation 
before  him,  and  he  may  have  been  his  son,  but  there  is  no  proof  of 
it."  He  gives  a  list  of  some  fifty  pictures  by  him  which  are  still  pre- 
served, including  a  number  of  full  lengths  and  two  family  groups, 
and  surmises  that  he  remained  in  Boston  until  his  pupil  or  imitator, 
Copley,  had  begun  to  paint  better  than  himself.  Blackburn,  how- 
ever he  may  have  got  his  training,  was  a  respectable  painter  and 
might  fairly  rival  Smybert  or  the  youthful  Copley.  His  portraits 
are  rigid  and  the  modeUing  dry,  like  those  of  his  contemporaries, 
but  they  are  serious  work,  and  he  sometimes  shows  a  feeling  for 
color  in  delicate  grays  and  quiet  tones  which  is  entirely  his  own,  and 
he  was,  moreover,  capable  of  composing  a  group  fairly  well. 


COPLEY:     POKTUAIT   OF    MRS.    lOKl).    HARII'OKD     VrilKN.KUM. 


.MUjr.vraHT/.  aKO'-rr^iAH  .cimoi  .h>im  ho  iiAiUHon  :  Y;4j«iorj 


CHAPTER    II 

COPLEY   AND   HIS   WORK 

American  Art  First  becomes  of  Serious  Importance  with  Copley  and  West. 

Copley's     Family.  — His     Stepfather,      Peter      Pelham.  — Copley's     Early 

Training.  —  His    Marriage    and    Life    in    Boston. —  Exhibits    in    London. 

Finally  goes  abroad  and  is  followed  by  his  Family.  —  Settles  in  London. 

Works  painted  there.  —  His  Death.  — His  Personal  Character.  —  His 
Painting.  —  Sincerity  of  his  Work  done  in  America.  —  Improvement  of  his 
Workmanship  in  England 

In  spite  of  the  modest  merits  of  their  predecessors,  it  was  with 
Copley  and  West  that  American  painters  first  took  a  recognized 
position  in  the  world  of  art.  Neither  of  the  men  were  geniuses,  but 
they  had  respectable  talents ;  and  both  for  what  they  did  and  for 
what  they  were,  each  occupies  securely  a  little  niche  in  the  temple  of 
Fame  which  shields  him  against  oblivion. 

With  no  similarity  of  character  or  of  work,  there  is  still  a  curious 
parallelism  in  their  lives  —  each  born  in  different  provinces  of  a  new 
country  where  art  was  still  in  its  infancy,  and  each  coming  to 
London  to  gain  wealth,  honor,  fame,  and  finally  to  die  there  at  an 
advanced  age,  just  as  their  vogue  was  beginning  seriously  to  decline. 
They  were  almost  exactly  contemporaries,  having  been  born  and 
dying  within  a  year  or  so  of  each  other. 

Copley  was  the  elder,  which  of  itself  should  give  him  precedence ; 
but  it  is  also  convenient  to  consider  him  first  because  his  beginnings 
are  interwoven  with  the  earlier  men,  and  his  work  shows  their  style, 
which  he  carried  on  and  perfected,  being  brought  up  and  working  at 
Boston,  which  was,  as  much  as  any  place  could  be,  the  centre  of  the  in- 
tellectual life  of  the  colonies.  He  did  not  go  to  England  until  he  was 
nearly  forty,  and  led  there  a  rather  retired  and  quiet  life,  in  pointed 
contrast  to  West,  who  had  scarcely  any  professional  instruction  in 
America,  and  was  hardly  of  age  when  he  left,  but  who  advised, 
taught,  and  assisted  two  generations  of  younger  men  in  their  begin- 
nings. 

19 


20  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

John  Singleton  Copley  was  born  in  Boston,  July  3,  1737.  His 
father  was  of  a  Yorkshire  family  long  settled  in  County  Limerick, 
Ireland,  where  he  married  and  witli  his  wife  came  to  Boston  in  1736. 
He  died  in  the  West  Indies  about  the  time  of  his  son's  birtli.  His 
widow  went  into  the  tobacco  trade  and  sold,  as  one  of  her  notices 
sets  forth,  "  the  best  Virginia  Tobacco,  Cut,  Pigtail,  Spun,  by 
Wholesale  and  Retail,  at  the  cheapest  rates,"  and  was  long  a  popu- 
lar and  well-known  dealer  in  Boston.  Nine  or  ten  years  after  her 
first  husband's  death  she  married  Peter  Pelham,  an  event  of  the 
greatest  advantage  and  importance  to  the  boy. 

Pelham  was  a  mezzotint  engraver  of  serious  merit.  John 
Chaloner  Smith's  "  Catalogue  of  British  Engravers  "  shows  that  he 
executed  some  thirty-six  plates,  more  than  half  of  them  in  England. 
His  American  work  consists  largely  of  heads  of  divines  from  un- 
skilful originals,  and  of  necessity  without  beauty,  but  occasionally, 
as  in  the  portrait  of  Sir  William  Pepperell  after  Smybert,  he  got  a 
fairly  attractive  subject,  and  produced  a  good  plate.  He  came  to 
America  about  1726  but  found  little  call  for  his  skill  there,  so  that 
he  took  advantage  of  his  education,  which  seems  to  have  been 
unusually  good,  by  opening  a  school  where  he  taught  "  Reading, 
Writing,  Needlework,  Dancing,  and  the  art  of  Painting  upon  Glass." 
He  continued  his  school  after  his  marriage,  and  also  practised  his 
art  when  he  found  opportunity.  He  seems  to  have  claimed  and 
been  allowed  a  c^ood  social  standini^  writin^x  "gentleman"  after  his 
signature  in  a  surety  bond,  the  other  witness  being  but  a  peruke- 
maker.     WHien  he  died  he  is  described  as  "  schoolmaster." 

He  engraved  a  number  of  portraits  of  divines,  some  of  them 
from  his  own  paintings,  and  was  a  man  well  known  and  esteemed. 
It  is  certain  that  Smybert  was  intimate  with  him  and  reasonably  cer- 
tain that  under  the  circumstances  then  prevailing  at  Boston  he  knew 
the  other  painters  and  engravers  there.  He  died  in  1751,  when  his 
stepson  was  but  fourteen ;  but  the  boy  was  precocious  and  had 
already  made  some  progress  in  drawing.  His  first  known  work 
is  said  to  be  a  portrait  of  his  stepfather,  and  a  couple  of  years  after 
he  painted  a  portrait  of  his  stepbrother,  Charles  Pelham,  and  the 
next  year,  when  he  was  sixteen,  published  an  engraving  of  the 
Rev.  William  Welsteed  from  a  painting  by  himself.     He  continued 


.■i 


FIG.  6.  — PFXHAM:    ENGRAVING  OF   COTTON   MATHER. 


COPLEY   AND    HIS   WORK  23 

to  paint  portraits,  and  in  1754  produced  an  allegorical  picture  thirty 
inches  long  by  twenty-five  wide,  of  Mars,  Venus,  and  Vulcan,  and 
the  next  year  a  miniature  of  Washington,  who  came  to  Boston  in 
the  first  flush  of  his  reputation  as  an  Indian  fighter. 

Copley  was  then  a  boy  of  seventeen,  and  it  only  needs  this 
account  of  his  boyhood  to  show  how  inexact  and  misleading  is  the 
often-quoted  statement  from  a  letter  by  his  son.  Lord  Lyndhurst,  to 
the  effect  that  his  achievements  were  remarkable,  "considering  that 
he  was  entirely  self-taught,  and  never  saw  a  decent  picture  with  the 
exception  of  his  own  until  he  was  nearly  thirty."  While  Perkins's 
suggestion  that  he  may  have  been  the  pupil  of  Blackburn  seems  to 
rest  on  nothing  but  its  inherent  probability,  he  had  exceptional  facil- 
ities for  his  early  training  under  his  stepfather,  and  there  were  a 
good  many  pictures  more  than  "  decent "  in  Boston  and  its  vicinity 
at  that  time,  and  Copley  was  in  the  way  of  seeing  most  of  them. 
Besides  the  Smyberts  and  Blackburns  there  were  portraits  by  foreign 
artists,  some  Knellers,  and  alleged  Van  Dycks,  one  of  Governor 
Belcher  by  Liotard,  a  likeness  of  Richard  Saltonstall  said  to  have 
been  painted  in  Holland  in  1644  ^Y  Rembrandt,  and  particularly  a 
copy  by  Smybert  after  Van  Dyck  of  a  cardinal's  head  which  now 
hangs  in  the  Harvard  Memorial  Hall,  and  which  was  studied  in  turn 
by  Copley,  Trumbull,  and  Allston. 

There  seems  never  to  have  been  any  doubt  about  Copley's 
vocation ;  at  seventeen  he  was  recognized  as  a  painter  and  had 
continual  opportunity  to  exercise  his  skill.  He  is  said  to  have 
been  quiet  and  reserved  as  a  boy,  and  his  career  is  undiversified 
either  by  struggles  against  poverty  or  Bohemian  outbreaks.  He 
accepted  the  rather  rigorous  life  of  Boston,  and  he  maintained  and 
insisted  upon  his  social  standing  as  one  of  the  upper  class.  His  life 
was  uneventful,  but  prosperous  and  dignified.  In  1769  he  married  a 
daughter  of  Richard  Clarke,  a  wealthy  merchant  of  the  town  and 
agent  of  the  East  India  Company,  a  marriage  in  every  way  fortunate. 
The  strongest  affection  united  them  throughout  their  lives,  and  Mrs. 
Copley,  who  possessed  much  personal  beauty,  was  introduced  by  her 
husband  a  number  of  times  into  his  pictures.  He  lived  in  a  solitary 
house  on  Beacon  Hill,  surrounded  by  his  farm,  as  he  called  it,  of 
eleven  acres,  in  which  he  took  great  pride  and  pleasure. 


24  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

It  was  there  in  176S  that  Charles  Wilson  Peale,  his  junior  by 
four  years,  came  to  him  for  instruction,  and  there  Trumbull,  then  a 
boy  of  sixteen,  visited  him,  finding  him  about  to  receive  a  party  of 
friends  at  dinner,  and  remembered  to  the  end  of  his  life  his  costume 
and  appearance.  "  An  elegant-looking  man,  dressed  in  a  fine 
maroon  cloth  with  gilt  buttons,"  and  probably  the  impression  was 
influential  in  determining  him  later  to  become  a  painter  himself.  It 
is  worth  while  to  add  that  the  visit  was  not  made  "at  the  time  of  his 
(Copley's)  marriage"  (he  had  been  married  two  years),  nor  did  he 
wear  "  a  suit  of  crimson  velvet  with  gold  buttons,"  both  of  which 
statements  are  carelessly  made  by  Dunlap,  and  being  more  pictu- 
resque than  Trumbull's  own  accounts  have  been  generally  copied  by 
biographers. 

Thus  Copley  passed  his  early  manhood  with  such  an  honorable 
position  and  so  assured  an  income  that  he  hesitated  to  leave  it 
for  the  larger  but  more  hazardous  opportunities  of  London.  He 
himself  wrote  in  1767:  "I  am  now  in  as  good  business  as  the 
poverty  of  this  place  will  admit.  I  make  as  much  money  as  if  I 
were  a  Raphael  or  a  Correggio,  and  three  hundred  guineas  a  year,  my 
present  income,  is  equal  to  nine  hundred  a  year  in  London."  These 
reflections  were  probably  prompted  by  the  reception  at  the  London 
Society  of  Artists  of  his  portrait  of  his  half-brother,  Henry  Pelham, 
known  as  the  "  Boy  with  the  Squirrel,"  which  he  had  sent  to  West 
with  a  letter  requesting  that  it  might  be  shown  in  the  exhibition. 
The  letter  was  delayed,  and  the  rules  of  the  society,  then  a  compara- 
tively new  institution,  forbade  the  admission  of  anonymous  work ; 
but  West,  from  the  pine  of  which  the  stretcher  was  made  and  from 
the  flying  squirrel,  recognized  the  painting  as  the  work  of  an  Ameri- 
can, and  with  his  customary  kindliness  urged  that  it  should  be  hung, 
praising  the  "delicious  color,  worthy  of  Titian  himself."  The  pic- 
ture was  shown  in  the  exhibition  of  1766,  and  much  admired.  His 
name  appeared  in  the  catalogue  as  Mr.  William  Copely  of  Boston, 
New  England.  The  next  year,  when  he  sent  a  full  length  of  a  lady 
with  a  bird  and  dog,  he  is  Mr.  Copley,  and  in  1768  his  name  is 
given  in  full  and  correctly.  He  sent  that  year  a  half-length  portrait 
of  a  gentleman  and  another  of  a  lady,  the  latter  in  crayon.  In  1771 
and  1772  he  appears  again  as  Mr.  Copely  with,  in  the  latter  year,  the 


COPLEY   AND    HIS   WORK  25 

letters  F.S.A.  after  his  name,  showing  that  he  had  been  elected  a 
Fellow  of  the  Society  of  Artists.  This  was  probably  done  through 
West's  influence,  who  was  in  correspondence  with  Copley  and  had 
invited  him  to  come  to  London  and  make  his  house  his  home.  In 
consequence  of  this,  he  sailed  for  England  in  June  of  1774,  leaving 
his  family  in  Boston,  and  apparently  in  the  expectation  of  returning 
there.  West  received  him  on  his  arrival,  took  him  to  see  the  pic- 
tures in  the  Queen's  Palace,  introduced  him  to  persons  likely  to  be 
helpful  to  him,  and  furthered  his  interests  in  every  way  in  his  power. 
He  stayed  in  London  during  the  summer,  painting  a  number  of  por- 
traits, including  those  of  Lord  and  Lady  North  and  heads  of  the 
King  and  Queen,  and  in  the  autumn  left  for  Italy,  passing  the  win- 
ter in  Rome,  where  he  spent  his  time  studying  the  antiquities,  copy- 
ing both  from  the  statues  and  paintings,  and  finishing  a  group  of 
Ralph  Izard  of  South  Carolina  and  his  wife,  the  only  portraits  which 
he  did  there. 

The  growing  political  disturbances  in  America,  as  well  as  the 
favor  with  which  his  painting  was  received,  caused  Copley  to  send  for 
his  family,  and  in  July  of  the  next  year,  while  he  was  at  Parma  copy- 
ing the  "St.  Jerome"  of  Correggio,  for  which  he  had  a  commission,  he 
learned  of  their  arrival  in  London,  and  after  a  trip  down  the  Rhine 
and  through  the  Netherlands  joined  them  before  the  end  of  the 
year.  Mrs.  Copley  left  behind  her  in  America  Mrs.  Pelham,  the 
artist's  mother,  and  in  her  care  an  infant  only  a  few  weeks  old,  which 
she  was  afraid  to  expose  to  the  trials  of  an  ocean  voyage,  and  which 
died  soon  after.  She  took  with  her  three  children,  and  was  soon 
afterward  joined  by  her  father,  Mr.  Clarke,  and  her  brothers,  who 
had  previously  moved  to  Canada.  Mr.  Clarke  was  a  strong  Tory. 
It  was  to  him  that  the  tea  was  consigned  which  was  dumped  into 
the  harbor  at  the  "  Boston  tea  party,"  and  in  other  ways  he  suffered 
so  heavily  for  his  views  that  he  subsequently  received  a  pension 
from  the  British  government  up  to  his  death. 

Copley,  on  the  contrary,  favored  the  American  party,  but  without 
strong  feeling.  He  writes  to  his  wife  on  her  arrival  in  England, 
when  war  was  imminent:  "  You  know,  years  ago,  I  was  right  in  my 
opinion  that  this  would  be  the  result  of  the  attempt  to  tax  the  colony  ; 
it  is  now  my  settled  conviction  that  all  the  power  of  Great  Britain 


26  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

will  not  reduce  them  to  obedience,"  but  he  adds  a  postscript  instruct- 
ing his  half-brother  "  on  no  account  whatever  to  take  part  in  the  pres- 
ent dispute."  He,  more  than  West,  seems  to  have  kept  his  sympathies 
to  himself  during  the  war,  and  to  have  regarded  it  as  something  in 
which  he  had  no  personal  concern,  and  to  have  cared  more  for  his 
family  relations  and  for  his  advancement  in  his  art  than  for  public 
questions.  He  nevertheless  was  grieved  at  the  suffering  caused  by 
the  war,  and  rejoiced  at  its  close.  He  was  working  at  the  time  on  a 
portrait  of  Elkanah  Watson,  in  the  background  of  which  he  had 
introduced  a  ship.  On  Dec.  5,  17S2,  they  listened  together  to  the 
King's  speech  recognizing  America's  independence,  and  on  their 
return  to  his  house  Copley  at  once  painted  on  the  ship's  mast  the 
first  American  flag  displayed  in  England. 

When  they  first  settled  in  England,  Copley  lived  in  Leicester 
Square,  but  shortly  after  he  purchased  the  house  25  George  Street, 
Hanover  Square,  which  was  to  be  his  permanent  home,  and  after  his 
death,  that  of  his  son  the  Lord  Chancellor.  It  was  a  handsome 
mansion,  and  in  it  Copley  led  the  dignified,  stately  life  which  was 
dear  to  him.  His  house  was  known  to  all  Americans  visiting  Lon- 
don, and  its  hospitality  was  offered  to  all  those  of  sufficient  social 
standing.  His  talents  brought  him  ample  patronage  from  the  first. 
His  life  was  quiet,  devoted  to  his  family,  and  uneventful  except  for 
the  pictures  which  his  steady  industry  produced  —  not  only  portraits 
but  also  a  series  of  figure  pieces,  many  of  large  size,  one  of  the  first 
being  "  A  Youth  rescued  from  a  Shark,"  a  replica  of  which  now 
hangs  in  the  Boston  Museum.  The  "Youth  "  was  Brooke  Watson, 
who  had  been  a  companion  of  Copley's  on  liis  voyage  to  England, 
and  who  had  related  his  adventure  so  frequently  and  vividly  that  the 
painter  succeeded  in  giving  an  appearance  of  reality  to  a  very 
exceptional  scene.  Brooke  Watson  himself  was  not  an  altogether 
admirable  character.  His  youth  was  devoted  to  the  slave  trade  ;  he 
served  under  Wolfe  at  Louisburg,  and  later  was  Commissary  Gen- 
eral to  the  army  under  Lord  Dorchester,  When  the  Revolution 
broke  out,  he  assumed  sympathy  with  the  national  cause  and  used  his 
position  to  act  as  a  spy  for  the  British.  In  spite  of  his  later  eleva- 
tion as  Lord  Mayor  of  London  and  Baronet  of  the  United  Kingdom, 
there  are  those  whose  sympathy  is  with  the  shark. 


FIG.    7.  — ^.uii.EY:    PORTRAIT   OF   JOHN   HANCOCK,   BOSTON    MUSEUM. 


COPLEY   AND    HIS   WORK  29 

About  the  same  time  Copley  })ainted  the  "  Family  Picture  "  of 
his  own  household,  including  himself.  "  The  Death  of  Lord 
Chatham"  was  finished  before  17S0  and  followed  by  the  "Death 
of  Major  Pierson,"  the  "Siege  of  Gibraltar,"  1790,  the  "  Surrender 
of  Admiral  de  Windt  to  Lord  Camperdown,"  and  "  Charles  I  de- 
manding the  Five  Impeached  Members."  Later  he  turned  more  to 
religious  subjects,  painting  a  "  Red  Cross  Knight  "  about  1789,  and 
half-a-dozen  years  later,  "  Abraham's  Sacrifice,"  "  Hagar  and  Ish- 
mael,"  "Saul  reproved  by  Samuel,"  "The  Nativity,"  the  "Tribute 
Money  "  (his  diploma  picture),  "  Samuel  and  Eli,"  also  large  portrait 
groups  such  as  the  "Three  Princesses,"  children  of  George  III, 
the  "  Fitch  Picture,"  the  "  Western  Family,"  and  the  "  Knatchbull 
Family." 

This  latter  picture  painted  for  Sir  Edward  Knatchbull  had  been 
plentifully  adorned  with  legends  illustrating  the  laborious  delibera- 
tion of  the  painter's  work.  Begun  in  1800,  the  baronet  fondly 
thought  that  it  might  be  finished  in  a  month,  but  it  was  not  finally 
put  in  place  until  1S07,  and  in  the  meanwhile  the  wife  first  repre- 
sented had  died  and  her  effigy  had  been  effaced  and  replaced  by  that 
of  a  second  one ;  two  children  had  also  gone  the  way  of  all  flesh 
(though  their  portraits  remained),  and  four  more  had  arrived.  It  is 
even  said  that  Sir  Edward  desired  his  first  wife  introduced  floating 
as  a  guardian  angel  over  the  group,  but  that  his  second  objected  so 
decidedly  and  strenuously  that  her  likeness  w-as  painted  out  for 
the  second  time. 

Toward  the  end  of  Copley's  life  his  vogue  as  a  painter  began  to 
decline,  many  of  his  large  compositions  remained  unsold,  including 
an  equestrian  portrait  of  the  Prince  of  Wales  and  "  The  Offer  of  the 
Crown  to  Lady  Jane  Grey,"  a  canvas  with  the  figures  half  life-size, 
a  scale  which  was  unusual  with  him.  Then,  too,  Sharpe,  the 
engraver,  caused  him  much  trouble  by  his  dilatoriness  in  finishing 
the  plate  of  the  "  Siege  of  Gibraltar,"  w^hich  dragged  along  through 
several  years  after  the  prints  had  been  promised  and  subscriptions 
received.  All  this  with  his  large  establishment  and  his  expensive 
manner  of  life  involved  him  in  financial  difficulties,  and  to  insure 
his  son's  advance  in  the  study  and  practice  of  the  law  he  was  forced 
frequently  to  borrow   money  from  his  son-in-law,  Gardiner  Gi'eene 


30  HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

of  Boston,  who  had  married  his  eldest  daughter  and  returned  with 
her  to  America  in  1800.  He  died  in  1815,  too  soon  to  enjoy  the 
great  success  of  his  son,  and  was  buried  in  the  parish  church  of 
Croydon. 

Copley's  strongest  personal  trait  seems  to  have  been  his  family 
affection.  It  was  not  demonstrative.  With  his  birth  and  training  in 
colonial  Boston  that  was  not  to  have  been  expected,  but  he  was 
a  sood  son  and  a  g-ood  husband,  and  he  aided  his  half-brothers  to 
the  best  of  his  ability.  The  radical  difference  of  political  views 
caused  no  dissensions  between  him  and  his  father-in-law,  who  lived 
with  him  until  his  death,  and  his  wife  and  children  loved  and 
honored  him.  Apart  from  his  family  life  he  was  a  rather  reserved 
man,  wrapped  up  in  his  work,  not  genial,  and  with  a  disposition 
to  brood  over  his  griefs.  The  breaking  of  a  box  of  casts  which  he 
had  sent  from  Italy  was  a  disappointment,  which,  in  the  words  of 
his  son,  "  he  never  ceased  to  regret  during  the  whole  course  of  his 
life,"  and  the  sale  of  his  Beacon  Hill  "  farm  "  embittered  his  exist- 
ence. He  felt  that  he  had  been  wronged,  defrauded  of  a  fortune, 
though  apparently  he  only  made  the  mistake,  personally  or  through 
his  agent,  of  selling  the  property  just  before  its  great  rise  in  value, 
and  even  the  future  Lord  Chancellor,  when  he  made  a  trip  to  Amer- 
ica for  that  purpose,  could  find  no  legal  flaw  in  the  transaction. 

Copley's  painting  separates  itself  into  two  pretty  sharply  marked 
divisions,  according  to  whether  it  was  done  before  or  after  he  left 
Boston.  The  latter  half  is  far  more  skilled  and  complete  technically; 
but  it  is  the  earlier  work,  the  long  series  of  portraits  of  our  colonial 
dignitaries,  divines,  judges,  and  merchants  with  their  womankind 
which  is  most  interesting  and  characteristic,  and  which  gives  him 
his  peculiar  importance.  They  are  the  only  pre-revolutionary  relics 
on  which  we  can  depend  to  put  before  our  eyes  the  very  age  and 
body  of  the  time.  The  lack  of  facile  skill  makes  their  veracity 
more  convincing  than  lliat  of  the  canvases  of  Gainsborough  or  Rey- 
nolds, where  temperament  or  training  idealized  or  Italianized  the 
sitters  into  something  rather  different  from  what  their  contempora- 
ries saw  in  daily  intercourse.  Gainsborough  was  a  poet,  Reynolds 
an  eclectic,  wise  in  all  the  traditions  of  the  craft,  who  could  at  will 
see  with  the  eye  and  work  with  the  hand  of  Van  Dyck  or  Titian  — 


FIG.  8.  — COPLEY:    MRS.  SCOTT,  OWNED    BY   GEORGE   SCOTT   WINDSOR,    BOSTON. 


COPLEY   AND    HIS   WORK  33 

or  come  pretty  near  to  it.  Copley  had  no  such  temperament  or 
traininsf.  The  sitters  themselves  in  the  cold,  clear  lieht  of  New  Eno-- 
land  were  what  he  tried  to  put  on  the  canvases,  unmodified  by  any 
golden  mist  of  Venice  or  facile  brush  work  of  the  Netherlands. 

This  is  not  to  make  hini  the  equal,  much  less  the  superior,  of  the 
men  just  named.  His  surroundings  forced  upon  him  a  greater  sin- 
cerity, which  seems  also  to  have  corresponded  with  his  temperament. 
He  began  under  the  influence  of  his  stepfather  Pelham,  and  though 
the  latter  died  when  he  was  a  boy  of  fourteen,  yet  his  influence  shows 
through  much  of  his  early  work.  The  engraving,  in  mezzotint,  of 
Welsteed,  made  when  he  was  sixteen,  much  resembles  the  average 
work  of  Pelham  and  is  more  like  the  production  of  a  mediocre  crafts- 
man than  the  early  effort  of  a  boy  of  exceptional  talent.  Copley 
very  soon  gave  up  engraving  and  seems  never  to  have  returned  to  it 
in  any  form,  but  his  early  works  show  its  influence  in  a  blackness  of 
shadow  and  a  hardness  of  style.  They  were  in  addition  stiff  and 
ungraceful,  and  in  the  faces  was  a  sincerity  of  plainness  which  must 
have  been  trying  to  the  sitters.  Even  Smybert,  whose  work  resembles 
that  of  Copley  at  this  period,  and  whose  colonial  dames  are  rigid  and 
unbending  enough,  yet  manages  to  put  into  their  faces  a  comeliness 
and  charm  unknown  to  the  youthful  Copley,  still  struggling  uncom- 
promisingly with  the  difificulties  of  drawing.  His  improvement  was 
steady,  but  it  took  him  long  to  master  certain  details,  like  the  render- 
ing of  eyes,  which  Smybert  never  became  entirely  sure  of.  At  first 
they  were  little  better  than  dark  slits,  and  in  his  best  colonial  work 
the  lids  are  often  unnaturally  prominent.  He  learned  nothing  by 
heart,  acquired  no  ready  formulas  for  execution.  He  had  to  see 
every  detail  in  front  of  him  and  put  it  down  exactly  as  it  was.  He 
worked  laboriously,  mixing  each  tint  with  his  palette  knife,  holding 
it  up  and  matching  it  to  his  sitter's  face  before  he  placed  it  on  the  can- 
vas. This  made  him  a  slow  executant,  and  there  are  many  stories 
of  the  tedium  of  sitting  to  him ;  sixteen  sittings  of  a  whole  day  each 
were  not  considered  too  much  for  a  head  alone,  and  when  at  a  much 
later  period  he  painted  the  children  of  George  HI,  the  whole  party, 
—  the  princesses,  their  attendants,  even  the  spaniels  and  the  parrots  — 
broke  into  open  revolt,  which  was  only  quelled  through  West's  inter- 
vention with  the  old  king.    ■ 


34  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

The  pictures  thus  produced  were  witliout  beauty  of  tone  or  rich- 
ness of  color.  Something  must  be  allowed  for  the  fading  of  the 
flesh  tones,  probably  put  in  with  carmine,  but  the  effect  must  always 
have  been  crude  and  harsh.  The  high  lights  are  chalky  white,  the 
shadows  black  or  brickish  brown;  a  cold  raw  blue  (like  Prussian 
blue)  is  often  painfully  prominent,  and  there  is  no  attempt  to  soften 
the  opposing  tints  nor  to  blend  them.  The  paint  is  laid  on  heavily 
and  worked  smooth  until  there  are  no  brush  marks  visible.  There 
is  no  attempt  to  keep  the  shadows  transparent  nor  much  glazing  or 
working  over.  It  follows  the  style  of  his  predecessors,  founded  on 
German  or  French  models,  and  shows  no  trace  of  the  richer,  ampler 
work  already  beginning  in  England,  where  the  traditions  of  Van 
Dyck  were  being  revived.  Nevertheless,  in  spite  of  these  faults,  or 
possibly  on  account  of  them,  his  portraits  have  remarkable  qualities. 
The  figures  are  well  placed  on  the  canvas,  in  good  if  rather  rigid 
poses,  the  backgrounds,  especially  in  the  full-length  portraits,  are 
suflficiently  furnished  with  curtains,  tables,  and  Turkey  rugs,  but  over 
and  above  all  else  is  the  thorough,  unwearied  sincerity  of  the  work. 
Copley  knew  his  sitters,  knew  their  position  in  the  community,  their 
dignity,  their  character,  their  wealth.  He  was  in  sympathy  with 
them  and  judged  by  their  own  standard  those  airs  and  graces  which 
to  a  European  might  seem  provincial  and  uncouth.  Holmes  has 
well  called  his  portraits  the  titles  of  nobility  of  the  Bostonians  of 
his  day.  He  painted  them  as  they  were,  —  serious,  self-reliant, 
capable,  sometimes  rather  pompous  in  their  heavy  velvet  coats,  but 
men  to  be   depended  on    in   aii  emergency. 

The  women  were  fit  mates  for  the  men,  their  faces  stamped  with 
that  character  which  left  its  impress  on  every  child  of  the  ample  fam- 
ilies of  the  time.  The  least  successful  are  the  younger  women,  and 
at  times  there  is  a  difficulty  in  reconciling  his  portraits  with  the  repu- 
tation of  the  sitters  for  grace  and  beauty  handed  down  in  the  old 
diaries  and  letters;  l^ut  in  time  his  sincerity  triumphed  even  here,  and 
while  the  portrait  remains  crude,  hard,  and  without  charm,  yet  we 
recognize  that  it  is  the  portrait  of  a  charming  woman.  This  lack 
of  charm  tells  terribly  against  them  when  hung  in  a  gallery  with 
other  pictures ;  Ijut  when  seen  in  the  j^laces  for  which  they  were 
destined,   the  halls  or  rooms  of    old  colonial  houses  of    Boston  or 


COPLEY   AND    HIS   WORK  37 

other  of  the  New  England  cities,  or  brought  together  in  official 
groups  as  in  the  Harvard  Memorial  Hall,  their  inherent  strength 
makes  itself  felt.  They  take  their  places  as  the  true  genii  loci  as 
nothing  else  could  do.  Even  their  faults  strengthen  the  impression. 
If  a  bit  of  drawing,  a  hand  for  example,  has  been  too  difficult, 
it  remains  always  the  sitter's  hand,  badly  drawn  perhaps,  but  not 
replaced  by  anything  more  facile  but  less  true,  and  the  same  faithful- 
ness pervades  all  the  details  and  accessories. 

The  velvet  coats  and  embroidered  waistcoats  of  the  men,  the 
satin  robes  and  laces  of  the  women,  are  of  undoubted  genuineness. 
Even  if  the  satin  looks  like  tin,  we  know  that  it  is  satin  ;  and  if  a 
colonial  worthy  goes  to  the  expense  of  silk  stockings,  not  even  the 
most  casual  observer  could  mistake  them  for  wool.  In  time  this 
unremitting  labor  began  to  have  its  result.  During  the  last  ten 
years  or  so  of  his  Boston  life,  Copley  was  master  of  his  trade  and 
could  produce  what  he  tried  to.  That  his  portraits  still  remained  dr}' 
and  hard,  without  atmosphere,  was  because  he  had  not  seen  enough 
good  work  to  recognize  what  he  lacked.  His  color,  too,  is  mostly 
displeasing,  or  at  least  not  pleasing,  and  there  are  but  few  of  his 
canvases  that  merit  the  praise  West  bestowed  on  "  the  delicious 
color"  of  his  "  Boy  with  a  Squirrel."  But  he  was  now  in  a  position 
to  benefit  at  once  from  increased  knowledge.  He  was  no  sooner 
abroad  than  his  style  gained  in  ease  and  simplicity.  His  portrait  of 
Ralph  Izard  and  his  wife,  painted  when  he  was  in  Rome,  shows  still 
something  of  the  old  stiffness  of  attitude,  the  over-filling  with  detail ; 
but  the  work  is  smoother,  more  graceful,  though  still  minutely 
finished  in  all  its  parts  in  a  way  more  characteristic  of  the  Continen- 
tal work  of  the  time  than  the  English,  where  the  example  of  Rey- 
nolds had  produced  a  broader,  more  effective  handling. 

With  his  London  life  Copley's  work  took  on  more  and  more  of 
the  English  manner.  His  "  Family  Picture  "  of  himself,  his  wife,  his 
father-in-law,  and  his  four  young  children,  painted  a  few  years  after 
his  arrival,  shows  this  alteration,  but  retains  also  the  finer  qualities  of 
his  colonial  period  and  is  one  of  his  very  best  works.  The  composi- 
tion is  not  in  perfect  unity,  and  the  tone  is  cold,  with  much  of  a  sort 
of  claret  color  and  his  old  unpleasant  blue,  but  they  are  softened  and 
harmonized  with  skill,  and  the  shadows  and  blacks  are  soft,  rich,  and 


38  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

deep.  The  painting  of  the  heads  is  superb,  drawn  impeccably,  full 
of  character,  and  with  only  a  touch  of  the  old  rigidity,  the  childi'cn 
especially  most  happy  in  attitude  and  expression.  This  was  his  first 
family  group  in  England,  and  Mrs.  Amory  says  he  had  done  nothing 
at  all  of  the  kind  in  America,  with  the  exception  of  his  boyish  alle- 
gory of  "  Mars  and  Venus."  His  groups  were  certainly  rare,  which 
seems  rather  strange,  considering  the  example  of  Smybert  and  Black- 
burn and  the  large  dimensions  of  some  of  his  portrait  canvases.  It 
is  surprising  also  that  with  so  little  experience  he  should  have  suc- 
ceeded from  the  beginning  with  complicated  compositions.  The 
"  Family  Picture "'  was  preceded  by  the  "  Youth  rescued  from  a 
Shark,"  and  followed  by  the  series  of  his  historical  pictures,  inspired 
doubtless  by  West's,  who,  as  will  appear  in  his  life,  w^as  the  founder 
of  the  school ;  but  surpassing  their  prototypes,  they  remain  to-day 
masterpieces  of  the  kind.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  no  other 
artist  of  the  time  could  have  produced  the  "  Death  of  Chatham." 
To  the  sincerity  of  the  emotion,  without  false  sentiment  or  bombast, 
the  skill  of  the  arrangement  of  grouping  and  light,  the  clear  charac- 
terization of  the  heads,  is  added  a  peculiarly  interesting  arrangement 
of  the  scarlet  and  white  of  the  peers'  robes,  which  forces  the  scene 
upon  the  mind.  It  is  not  poetry,  the  gods  did  not  make  Copley 
poetical ;  but  it  is  splendid  prose,  and  its  immediate  successors  were 
of  the  same  quality. 

These  compositions,  however,  were  but  incidents  in  his  work. 
Portrait  painting  was  the  business  of  his  life  from  beginning  to  end, 
but  his  latter  work  has  less  importance  in  a  history  of  American 
painting.  Probably  it  should  be  called  better  than  his  earlier.  It 
certainly  had  fewer  glaring  faults,  but  it  also  had  less  personality. 
His  earlier  work  is  unmistakable  anywhere,  his  latter  often  approaches 
so  closely  to  that  of  the  brilliant  circle  of  contemporary  portrait 
painters  in  England  that  it  is  practically  indistinguishable  from  it. 
A  little  extra  firmness  and  solidity  of  drawing  persists  to  the  end ; 
but  the  poses,  the  dark  backgrounds,  the  rich  color,  the  glazings,  are 
all  of  the  school.  Like  Reynolds,  he  sought  for  "the  Venetian,"  the 
marvellous  medium  supposed  to  have  been  used  by  Titian,  which 
like  the  philosopher's  stone  would  by  its  own  virtue  transform  the 
leaden  tones  of  mediocre  painters  into  gold.     He  even  thought  a 


COPLi:V    AM)    HIS    WORK  :^9 

few  years  before  his  death  tliat  he  had  found  it,  but  he  was  then 
only  one  of  many  who  could  paint  glowing  canvases.  Patronage  fell 
off;  almost  his  last  important  work,  the  equestrian  portrait  of  the 
Prince  Regent,  from  which  he  hoped  great  things,  remained  unsold ; 
his  health  declined,  and  his  life  did  not  long  outlast  his  popularity. 


CHAPTER    III 

CAREER    OF    BENJAMIN   WEST 

Benjamin  West.  —  His  Biographer,  John  Galt.  —  Ancestry  and  Childhood.  —  Early 
Patrons  and  Instruction.  —  Leaves  Philadelphia  for  New  York  and  sails 
thence  for  Italy.  —  Study  and  Work  in  Italy.  —  Arrival  in  London  and 
Success  there.  —  His  Marriage.  —  Introduction  to  the  King  and  Rise  in 
Royal  Favor.  —  "Death  of  General  Wolfe."  —  Founding  of  the  Royal 
Academy.  —  Loss  of  Royal  Patronage  on  the  Failure  of  the  King's  Mind.  — 
"Christ  healing  the  Sick,'"  and  Other  Late  Works.  —  His  Death. — West's 
Career.  —  Fortunate  throughout  his  Life.  —  His  Training.  —  His  Public. — 
Quality  of  his  Work.  —  His  Personal  Character 

The  life  of  Copley  was  long,  honorable,  and  successful,  but  it 
was  not  picturesque.  It  was  his  surroundings  when  a  boy  that 
turned  him  to  art,  and  he  followed  painting,  without  enthusiasm,  as 
the  most  obvious  means  of  earning  a  livelihood.  With  his  industry 
and  intelligence,  his  success  would  have  been  equally  assured  if 
chance  had  directed  his  talents  into  law  or  trade.  With  West  it 
was  different.  His  career  has  long  been  used  as  a  triumphant  dem- 
onstration of  the  theory  of  God-given  genius,  which,  like  lightning, 
strikes  where  it  will,  and  develops  in  spite  of  the  most  uncongenial 
surroundings.  The  story  of  his  childish  attempts  at  drawing  has 
been  w'orked  into  a  sort  of  tradition,  and  is  known  to  thousands  W'ho 
never  saw  one  of  his  pictures,  nor  ever  heard  the  name  of  Copley. 
The  story  is  a  remarkable  one,  but  it  has  been  aided  greatly  in 
popularity  by  the  telling.  John  Gait  was,  as  one  may  say,  the  offi- 
cial biographer.  He  was  a  writer  of  ability,  who  tried  his  hand  at 
everything, — poems,  plays,  essays,  novels,  —  a  precursor  of  the  "  Kail 
Yard  "  school,  whose  Scotch  dialect  stories  have  had  sufficient  vitality 
to  warrant  their  reprinting  within  the  last  few  years.  But  between 
his  romances  and  his  plays,  he  was  a  man  who,  as  he  himself 
says  of  Plutarch,  "had  no  taste  for  the  blemishes  of  mankind.  His 
mind  delighted  in  the  contemplation  of  moral  vigor;  and  he  seems 
justly  to  have  thought  that  it  was  nearly  allied  to  virtue;  hence 
many  of  those  characters  whose  portraiture  in  his  works  furnish  the 

40 


FIG.  lo.  — STUART  :     PORTRAIT   OF   BENJAMIN    WEST,    NATIONAL    PORTRAIT 

GALLERY,    LONDON. 


cari:i:r  of  benjamin  west  43 

youthful  mind  with  inspiring  examples  of  true  greatness,  more 
authentic  historians  rei)resent  in  a  light  far  different." 

"More  authentic  historians" — Dunlaj),  for  instance — do  not 
diminish  the  "  true  greatness"  of  West ;  but  they  explode  some  of  the 
embellishments  with  which  Gait,  in  the  interest  of  morality,  saw  fit 
to  adorn  it.  And  yet  the  life  of  West  is  best  told  by  including 
copious  extracts  from  Gait,  who  received  many  of  the  details  from 
him  and  whose  style  is  in  harmony  with  his  subject. 

Benjamin  West  was  born  in  1738,  at  Springfield,  a  little  Penn- 
sylvania settlement,  and  his  childhood  knew  all  the  rigor  and  sim- 
plicity of  frontier  life;  but  his  family  were  people  of  position  in 
England  and  of  good  descent.  The  first  to  embrace  the  Quaker 
faith  was  Colonel  James  West,  the  companion  of  John  Hampden, 
and  Wrests  maternal  grandfather  was  a  confidential  friend  of 
William  Penn.  When  the  West  family  came  to  America,  in  1699, 
John,  the  father  of  Benjamin,  was  left  to  complete  his  education  at 
the  great  school  of  the  Quakers  at  Uxbridge,  and  did  not  join  his  rela- 
tives until  1 7 14.  Shortly  after  his  arrival  he  married,  and  as  a  part 
of  his  W'ife's  marriage  portion  received  a  negro  slave  ;  but  during  a 
voyage  to  the  W^est  Indies,  in.  the  course  of  trade,  he  was  so  shocked 
by  the  cruelties  of  slavery  that  on  his  return  he  released  his  slave 
and  continued  to  debate  the  subject  of  slavery  with  his  neighbors  at 
their  meetings,  until  a  resolution  was  passed  "  that  it  was  the  duty 
of  Christians  to  give  freedom  to  their  slaves."  The  discussion  spread 
until,  in  1753,  it  was  ultimately  established  as  one  of  the  tenets  of 
the  Quakers  that  no  person  could  remain  a  member  of  their  com- 
munity who  held  a  human  creature  in  slavery.  An  echo  of  this 
faith  appeared  long  afterward,  when  the  son  offered  his  ample  gal- 
leries in  London  for  the  meetings  of  the  Committee  of  the  Society 
for  the  Abolition  of  the  Slave  Trade ;  and  what  other  details  have 
been  handed  down  about  John  West  show  him,  though  but  a  store- 
keeper in  a  small  village,  yet  a  man  of  character,  and  respected. 

Benjamin  was  the  youngest  child  of  a  large  family.  On  Sept. 
28,  1820,  Edmund  Peckover,  a  celebrated  preacher  of  the  Quakers, 
preached  in  a  meeting-house  erected  by  the  father  of  Mrs. 
West,  who  was  present  and  so  affected  by  the  fiery  and  minatory 
discourse  that  she  gave  birth  to  her  infant  immediately  after;  and 


44  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

such  was  the  agitation  into  which  she  was  thrown  that  the  con- 
sequences nearly  proved  fatal  to  herself  and  her  child.  Mr.  W^est 
was  much  impressed  by  the  occurrence,  and  his  feelings  were  shared 
by  Peckover,  who  "took  him  by  the  hand,  and  with  emphatic  solem- 
nity said  that  a  child  sent  into  the  world  under  such  remarkable 
circumstances  would  prove  no  ordinary  man  ;  and  he  charged  him 
to  watch  over  the  boy's  character  with  the  utmost  degree  of  paternal 
solicitude." 

Such  are  the  omens  and  prodigies  with  which  Gait  surrounds  the 
birth  of  his  hero.  They  sound  rather  absurd  to  the  taste  of  the 
present  day,  and  their  bathos  is  not  diminished  by  the  fact  that 
West  was  really  born  on  Oct.  lo,  1738,  and  Dunlap's  comment  that 
Peckover  did  not  come  to  America  until  five  years  after  that  date. 

It  was  when  he  was  six  that  the  well-known  incident  occurred  of 
his  attempting  to  draw  with  red  and  black  ink  the  portrait  of  his 
sister's  baby  which  he  had  been  set  to  watch.  The  next  year  he 
went  to  school,  but  still  continued  his  drawing,  until  one  day  a  party 
of  friendly  Indians,  amused  at  the  sketches  of  birds  and  flowers  which 
he  showed  them,  taught  him  to  prepare  the  red  and  yellow  colors 
with  which  they  painted  their  ornaments.  His  mother  furnished 
indigo,  the  cat's  fur  was  clipped  to  make  brushes,  and  with  these 
primitive  materials  he  produced  some  paintings  which  were  seen 
by  a  Mr.  Pennington,  a  Philadelphia  merchant  related  to  the  Wests. 
They  seemed  to  him  remarkable  productions  for  a  child  of  eight,  and 
he  promised  to  send  him  a  box  of  paints  which,  on  his  return  home, 
he  did.  The  boy's  delight  at  the  gift  was  unbounded.  He  kept  it 
by  his  bed  at  night  and  deserted  school  in  order  to  give  himself  up 
to  art.  Besides  paints  and  canvas,  the  box  contained  six  engravings 
by  "  Greveling,"  Gait  says.  Presumably  Gravelot's,  whose  volumi- 
nous works,  besides  the  charming  illustrations  with  which  his  name 
is  naturally  connected,  contain  many  copies  after  the  followers  of 
Raphael  and  the  Fontainebleau  school.  When  his  mother,  learning 
that  he  was  not  at  school,  finally  discovered  him  in  the  garret  hard 
at  work,  he  had  combined  two  of  these  engravings  on  a  single  canvas 
with  so  much  skill  that  she  refused  to  let  him  finish  it  lest  he  should 
spoil  it,  and  it  was  preserved  to  be  exhibited  sixty-six  years  after 
with  the  "  Christ  healing  the  Sick,"  the  painter  declaring  to  Gait 


CAREER   OF    BENJAMIN    WEST  45 

that  "there  were  inventive  touches  in  liis  first  and  juvenile  essay 
which  with  all  his  subsequent  knowledge  and  experience  he  had  not 
been  able   to  surjDass." 

A  few  days  after  Mr.  Pennington  made  another  visit  to  the 
Wests,  and  took  the  boy  with  him  to  Philadelphia,  where  he  com- 
posed a  picture  of  a  river,  with  vessels  on  the  water  and  cattle  on 
the  banks,  and  where  he  met  with  a  professional  painter,  one  Will- 
iams, who  had  painted  a  picture  for  one  of  Mr.  Pennington's 
acquaintance  who  asked  the  artist  to  show  it  to  young  West.  The 
interest  and  enthusiasm  of  the  boy  impressed  Williams,  who  asked 
if  he  had  read  any  books  on  the  lives  of  great  men,  and  finding  his 
reading  limited  to  the  Bible,  he  lent  him  the  works  of  Fresnoy  and 
Richardson  on  Painting.  Their  perusal  gave  to  him  the  idea  of  an 
artist's  career,  and  soon  after  his  skill  brought  him  his  first  pecuniary 
[)rofit. 

A  cabinet-maker  had  given  him  some  clean  poplar  boards,  and 
he  made  drawings  on  them  in  ink,  chalk,  and  charcoal.  Mr.  Wayne, 
a  gentleman  of  the  neighborhood,  noticed  them,  and  asked  for  two 
or  three  of  them  afterward,  complimenting  the  young  painter  and 
giving  him  a  dollar  apiece  for  them,  and  Dr.  Johnston  Morris,  an- 
other neighbor,  soon  after  gave  him  a  present  of  a  few  dollars  to  buy 
materials  to  paint  with.  These  were  the  first  public  patrons  of  the 
artist,  and  it  was  at  his  own  request  that  Gait  set  down  their  names 
and  deeds.  A  year  after  the  visit  to  Philadelphia  he  was  invited  to 
spend  a  few  weeks  at  the  house  of  a  Mr.  Flow^er,  who  had  sent  to 
England  for  a  governess  for  his  daughter;  she  was  interested  in 
West,  and  finding  him  unacquainted  with  other  books  than  the 
Bible  and  Fresnoy  and  Richardson,  she  read  to  him  from  Mr.  Flow- 
er's library  "  The  most  striking  and  picturesque  passages  from  trans- 
lations of  the  ancient  historians  and  poetry,"  and  it  was  thus  that  he 
heard  for  the  first  time  of  the  Greeks  and  Romans. 

The  wife  of  a  Mr.  Rogers  (a  friend  of  Mr.  Flower's)  was  greatly 
admired  for  her  beauty,  as  were  also  her  children.  On  Mr.  Flower's 
suggestion  and  with  his  father's  consent  the  boy  went  to  Lancaster 
to  paint  their  portraits  in  which  he  w\as  so  successful  that  he  had  all 
the  orders  that  he  could  conveniently  fill.  Among  others  he  painted 
the  portrait  of  a  gunsmith,   William    Henry,  who    had  acquired  a 


46  HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

handsome  fortune  in  that  profession  and  was  a  man  of  intelligence. 
He  admired  the  painting,  but  said  "  that  if  he  could  paint  as  well  he 
would  not  waste  his  time  on  portraits  but  would  devote  himself  to 
historical  subjects ;  and  he  mentioned  the  Death  of  Socrates  as  one 
of  the  best  topics  for  illustrating  the  moral  effect  of  painting."  Upon 
the  confession  of  the  painter  that  he  knew  nothing  of  Socrates,  Mr. 
Henry  took  from  his  library  a  volume  of  the  English  translation  of 
Plutarch  and  read  the  story.  West's  imagination  was  aroused,  and 
he  executed  a  painting  of  the  subject  which  when  finished  attracted 
much  attention  and  was  of  peculiar  advantage  to  him,  for  at  that 
time  Dr.  Smith,  Provost  of  the  College  at  Philadelphia,  happened 
to  be  at  Lancaster.  After  seeing  the  picture  and  talking  with  the 
artist  "he  offered  to  undertake  to  make  him  to  a  certain  desfree 
acquainted  with  classical  literature;  while  at  the  same  time  he  would 
give  him  such  a  sketch  of  the  taste  and  character  of  the  spirit  of 
antiquity  as  would  have  all  the  effect  of  the  regular  education 
requisite  to  a  painter." 

Benjamin  accordingly  went  to  the  capital  and  resided  at  the 
house  of  Mr.  Clarkson,  his  brother-in-law,  a  gentleman  who  had 
been  educated  at  Leyden  and  was  much  respected  for  the  intelli- 
gence of  his  conversation  and  the  propriety  of  his  manners.  Provost 
Smith  gave  to  his  jDupil  a  peculiar  training.  "  He  regarded  him  as 
destined  to  be  a  painter  and  on  this  account  did  not  impose  on  him 
those  grammatical  exercises  of  language  which  are  usually  required 
of  young  students  of  the  classics,  but  directed  his  attention  to  those 
incidents  which  were  likely  to  interest  his  fancy,  and  to  furnish  him 
at  some  future  time  with  subjects  for  his  easel.  He  carried  him 
immediately  to  those  passages  of  ancient  history  which  make  the 
most  lasting  impression  on  the  imagination  of  the  regular  bred 
scholar  and  described  the  picturesque  circumstances  of  the  trans- 
actions with  a  minuteness  of  detail  which  would  have  been  superflu- 
ous to  the  general  student."  It  was  at  this  time  when  confined  in 
bed  during  an  illness  that  he  discovered  for  himself  the  principle  of 
the  camera  obscura. 

At  the  end  of  his  Philadelphia  studies  the  question  of  settling 
him  in  some  profession  for  life  came  up,  and  Gait  gives  a  descrip- 
tion of  a  solemn  scene  with  discourses,  prayers,  and  a  final  dedication 


CAREER   OF   BENJAMIN    WEST  47 

of  the  youth  to  art  with  the  kisses  of  the  women  and  the  laying  on 
of  hands  by  the  men  — a  performance  which  Dunlap  points  out  would 
be  entirely  contrary  to  Quaker  custom,  and  which  could  never  have 
occurred  as  described,  although  it  is  probable  that  it  was  at  this  time, 
the  boy  having  attained  his  sixteenth  year,  that  it  was  decided  that 
he  was  to  make  painting  his  profession.  He  consequently  returned 
to  Philadelphia,  where  he  lived  for  the  next  few  years  with  his 
brother-in-law,  continuing  his  studies  with  Provost  Smith  in  the 
evenings,  but  devoting  the  day  to  portrait  painting.  He  also  found 
time  to  paint  a  composition  of  "The  Trial  of  Susannah,"  "drawing 
the  principal  figures  from  life,"  says  Gait,  but  Dunla})  who  had  seen 
it  says  that  the  composition  was  largely  from  a  print. 

He  was  living  at  this  time  most  frugally  to  save  enough  money 
for  a  visit  to  Europe,  and  it  was  this  consideration  which  caused  him 
to  pass  a  year  in  New  York.  The  city  was  distasteful  to  him,  and  he 
found  there  less  intellectual  and  refined  life  than  in  Philadelphia;  but 
he  could  charge  /,  10  for  a  half-length  portrait  and  ^5  for  a  head, 
double  his  previous  rates.  His  economies  were  finally  sufficient  for 
a  short  trip  in  Italy,  which  he  was  enabled  to  make  under  exceptionally 
favorable  conditions.  A  ship  laden  with  wheat  and  flour  was  being 
sent  to  Messrs.  Rutherford  and  Jackson  in  Leghorn,  a  well-known 
firm,  and  Mr.  Allen  their  Philadelphia  agent,  wishing  his  son  to  see 
something  of  the  world,  decided  to  send  him  abroad  by  her,  which 
Provost  Smith  hearing  of  at  once  begged  that  West  might  accom- 
pany him.  This  was  granted  and  in  addition  a  Mr.  Kelly,  whose 
portrait  he  was  painting  at  the  time,  presented  him  with  an  order 
for  ^50  on  his  agents. 

He  reached  Rome  in  July  of  1760,  where  the  picturesqueness  of 
his  position  as  the  member  of  a  strange  and  fantastic  religious  sect 
come  from  the  distant  wilds  of  America  (still  a  half-fabulous  country) 
to  study  the  fine  arts  was  in  every  way  calculated  to  arouse  the  in- 
terest and  curiosity  of  the  society  of  cosmopolitan  dilettanti  settled 
there.  His  courier  spread  his  fame  and  the  day  of  his  arrival,  before 
he  had  had  time  to  dress,  he  was  called  on  by  Mr.  Robinson,  after- 
ward Lord  Grantham,  who  took  him  that  evening  to  a  party  where 
he  met  some  of  the  best  people  in  Rome,  including  the  old  Cardinal 
Albani,    whose   blindness   had    not   diminished   his   reputation   as  a 


48 


HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 


connoisseur,  and  who  was  much  amazed  to  meet  an  American  wlio 
was  not  a  savage.  He  asked  if  he  were  white,  "  as  white  as  I  am," 
which  amused  West,  who  was  very  fair,  while  tlie  old  cardinal  was 
as  dark  as  an   Indian. 

Every  one  was  interested  to  see  the  effect  whicli  the  sight  of 
Rome  would  have  on  the  open  mind  of  the  newcomer,  and  a  party 
was  arranged  to  accompany  him  the  next  day.  It  was  then  that  he 
made  his  well-known  remark  about  the  "  Apollo  Belvidere,"  "  It  is  a 
Mohawk  warrior " ;  but  the  works  of   Raphael  and  Michael  Angelo 


Vie.  II.  —  Wksi':   Dkath  of  Wolfe. 

did  not  immediately  impress  him,  and  he  was  honest  enough  to  say 
so.  He  soon  began  work,  painting  a  portrait  of  Mr.  Robinson, 
which  he  showed  to  Raphael  Mengs,  the  most  j^rominent  of  the 
painters  then  in  Rome,  who  praised  it  generously  and  gave  West 
excellent  advice  as  to  his  study  in  Italy.  The  story  of  his  portrait 
reached  Mr.  Allen,  and  he  and  Mr.  Hamilton  united  in  giving  West 
unlimited  credit  at  tlieir  agents'.  This  enabled  him  to  remain  three 
years  in  Italy,  spending  his  time  in  travel,  copying  the  old  masters,, 
and  in  painting  a  "  Cymon  and  Iphigenia,"  also  an  "Angelica  and 
Medoro." 

His  career  there,  with  the  exception  of  an  illness  at  the  beginnings 


CAREER  OF  bi:njamin  wp:st  49 

was  most  successful.  Me  gained  many  friends,  some  reputation,  and 
was  made  a  memljer  of  tlie  Academies  in  Florence,  Bologna,  and 
Parma.  When  he  finally  reached  England  in  the  autumn  of  1763 
he  found  there  his  good  friends,  Mr.  Allen,  Governor  Hamilton,  and 
Dr.  Smith  who  were  in  a  position  to  introduce  him  advantageously. 
His  romantic  history,  his  personal  manners,  and  the  friends  and 
reputation  he  had  won  during  his  Italian  sojourn  were  all  factors  in 
his  favor.  He  finished  the  "Angelica  and  Medoro,"  begun  in  Italy, 
and  exhibited  it  with  the  "  Cymon  and  Iphigenia  "  and  a  portrait  of 
General  Monckton  at  the  Spring  Gardens  Exhibition  in  1764.  His 
success  was  immediate.  He  had  many  commissions,  and  Lord 
Rockingham  offered  him  a  permanent  engagement  at  ^700  a  year 
to  embellish  with  historical  paintings  his  mansion  in  Yorkshire, 
which  he  declined. 

With  the  growth  of  his  prosperity  he  abandoned  the  idea  of 
returning  to  America.  At  his  desire  his  father  came  to  England, 
bringing  with  him  the  lady  his  son  had  chosen  for  a  bride,  and  in 
September  of  1765  they  were  married  and  settled  permanently  in 
London.  Gait  gives  no  details  of  the  marriage,  nor  does  Dunlap  ;  but 
in  fact  the  family  of  Miss  Shewell,  the  bride,  were  much  opposed  to 
the  match,  and  when  West  wrote  to  the  lady  saying  that  his  father 
would  sail  for  London  bv  a  certain  bric^,  and  if  she  with  her  maid 
would  accompany  him,  they  could  be  married  on  arrival,  her  brother 
discovered  the  letter  and  promptly  locked  up  his  sister  until  the  ship 
should  have  sailed.  Three  good  friends  of  West,  however,  con- 
cluded that  this  was  not  to  be  endured,  A  rope  ladder  was  smuggled 
in  under  the  maid's  petticoat,  the  ship  set  sail  as  if  to  depart,  but 
anchored  again  lower  down  the  river;  at  night  the  mistress  and  maid 
descended  from  their  prison,  were  received  by  the  three  conspirators, 
all  got  into  a  coach,  lost  their  way,  and  finally  after  driving  about 
all  night  reached  the  brig  in  the  morning,  when  the  lady  safely 
embarked.  Her  assistants  in  this  romantic  adventure  were  Francis 
Hopkinson,  William  White,  who  was  afterward  the  first  Bishop  of 
the  American  Episcopal  Church,  and  Benjamin  Franklin.  The 
future  bishop  was  then  but  a  lad  of  seventeen,  but  to  the  end  of  his 
life  he  prided  himself  on  his  youthful  exploit. 

Archbishop  Drummond,  at  that  time  particularly  well  received 


50 


HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 


at  court,  became  one  of  West's  patrons,  commissioned  him  to 
paint  "  Agrippina  landing  with  the  Ashes  of  Germanicus,"  and 
strove  with  energy  to  raise  a  fund  of  ^'3000  for  the  artist  to  rid 
him  of  the  drudgery  of  portrait  painting  and  enable  him  to  devote 
himself  to  nobler  flights.  It  was  with  deep  chagrin  that  the  good 
archbishop  saw  the  subscription  stop  at  half  the  amount  sought 
and  the  scheme  abandoned,  but  he  was  of  far  greater  service  to  West 
in  another  way,  for  it  was  he  who  presented  him  to  the  King.  The 
royal  patronage  was  almost  a  necessity  to  the  artist  if  he  were  to 
continue  in  his  chosen  line.  The  large  size  of  the  canvases  needed 
for  the  paintings  calculated  to  ennoble  human  nature  rendered  them 
unsuitable  for  any  ordinaiy  dwelling  and  difficult  to  dispose  of.  An 
offer  to  paint  an  altarpiece  for  St.  Paul's  was  refused  with  energy  by 
the  bishop  who  "  would  not  suffer  the  doors  to  be  opened  to  intro- 
duce popery,"  though  several  lesser  churches  received  religious  pic- 
tures by  him  without  objection.  His  "  Orestes  and  Pylades  "  and  the 
"  Continence  of  Scipio  "  brought  him  nothing  but  fame.  His  house 
was  thronged  by  admiring  crowds,  his  servants  received  a  small 
fortune  in  tips  for  showing  his  pictures,  but  no  one  even  asked  their 
price. 

It  was  a  decisive  moment  in  West's  career  when  Archbishop 
Drummond  induced  the  King  to  send  for  him  and  his  picture  of 
"  Agrippina  landing  with  the  Ashes  of  Germanicus."  An  officious 
messenger  who  forestalled  the  archbishop  in  announcing  his  good 
fortune  to  West  described  the  King  to  him.  "  His  Majesty  is  a 
young  man  of  great  simplicity  and  candour ;  sedate  in  his  affections, 
scrupulous  in  forming  private  friendships,  good  from  principle,  and 
pure  from  a  sense  of  the  beauty  of  virtue,"  and  so  the  painter  found 
him.  He  received  West  with  all  the  simple  bonhomie  which  made 
George  III  such  an  excellent  family  man  and  so  poor  a  monarch. 
He  presented  him  to  the  Queen,  admired  his  picture,  and  suggested 
to  him  a  new  subject,  saying,  "  The  archbishop  made  one  of  his  sons 
read  Tacitus  to  Mr.  West  but  I  will  read  Livy  to  him  myself — that 
part  where  he  describes  the  departure  of  Regulus."  The  artist 
declaring  the  scene  admirable  for  a  picture,  the  King  gave  him  a 
commission  on  the  spot,  and  from  that  time  l^egan  the  long  friend- 
ship between  them  which  ended  only  with  death.     The  "  Regulus  " 


car1':1';k  ok  p,knj.\min  west  51 

was  successful  in  pleasing  the  royal  taste  and  was  followed  by  a 
series  of  other  works  ]:)roduced  with  amazing  rapidity  for  the  same 
patron,  culminating  in  a  command  to  decorate  the  royal  chapel  at 
Windsor. 

This  was  not  undertaken  by  the  King  without  grave  deliberation. 
The  question  whether  pictures  in  such  a  place  leaned  toward  popery, 
and  what  was  and  what  was  not  permissible  was  too  congenial  to  him 
to  be  hastily  dismissed.  There  was  much  taking  counsel  with  bish- 
ops and  deans  as  to  the  propriety  of  the  act,  and  finally  there  was  a 
list  drawn  up  of  subjects,  which,  as  Bisho})  Hurd  the  spokesman  said, 
"  Even  a  Quaker  might  contemplate  with  edification."  The  latent 
sarcasm  was  not  lost  on  George,  who  rebuked  it,  saying:  "The 
Quakers  are  a  body  of  Christians  for  whom  I  have  a  high  respect. 
I  love  their  peaceful  tenets  and  their  benevolence  to  one  another,  and 
but  for  the  obligation  of  birth  I  would  be  a  Quaker." 

It  was  at  this  time  that  West  made  an  innovation  for  which,  if 
for  nothing  else,  his  name  would  deserve  to  be  honored  in  the  annals 
of  art.  He  began  a  picture  of  the  death  of  General  Wolfe  after  the 
capture  of  Quebec,  and  it  was  reported  that  he  proposed  to  repre- 
sent his  characters  in  the  costumes  which  they  actually  wore.  Such 
a  degrading  of  lofty  emotions  by  vulgar  and  commonplace  details 
was  unheard  of.  Archbishop  Drummond,  seriously  alarmed,  called 
on  Reynolds  and  laid  the  case  before  him  and  together  they  visited 
West  and  tried  to  dissuade  him.  The  King  himself  heard  of  the 
discussion  and  questioned  West,  who  answered  with  admirable  good 
sense  that  the  event  to  be  commemorated  happened  in  the  year  1758 
in  a  region  of  the  world  unknowm  to  the  Greeks  and  Romans,  and  at 
a  period  of  time  when  no  w^arriors  who  wore  such  costumes  existed. 
"  The  subject  I  have  to  represent  is  a  great  battle  fought  and  won 
and  the  same  truth  which  gives  law  to  the  historian  should  rule  the 
painter.  If  instead  of  the  facts  of  the  action  I  introduce  fictions,  how 
shall  I  be  understood  by  posterity  ?  The  classic  dress  is  certainly 
picturesque,  but  by  using  it  I  shall  lose  in  sentiment  what  I  gain  in 
external  grace.  I  want  to  mark  the  time,  the  place,  and  the  people, 
and  to  do  this  I  must  abide  by  truth." 

After  the  picture  was  completed,  Reynolds  after  studying  it  long 
and  carefully  declared :   "  West  has  conquered ;  he  has   treated   his 


52 


HISTORY    OF    AMERICAN    PAINTING 


subject  as  it  ought  to  l)c  treated ;  I  retract  my  objections.  I  foresee 
that  this  picture  will  not  only  become  one  of  the  most  popular  but 
will  occasion  a  revolution  in  art."  It  was  about  the  same  time  that 
West  performed  his  other  great  permanent  service  to  art  in  being 
mainlv  instrumental  in  founding  the  Royal  Academy.  Picture 
exhibitions  were  a  comparative  novelty  in  England  and  had  had 
a  curious  origin.  When  the  Foundling  Hospital  was  finished, 
Hogarth  presented  to  it  his  portrait  of  Captain  Coram.  Five  years 
later  the  building  was  enlarged  and  other  artists  gave  or  promised 
works.  These  proved  a  great  attraction.  The  room  where  they 
were  hung  became  a  favorite  resort  of  the  public,  and  the  artists 
gained  reputation.  This  suggested  the  first  public  exhibition  of 
paintings  in  1760  at  the  Great  Room  of  the  Society  of  Arts,  Manu- 
factures, and  Commerce.  The  next  year  the  artists  divided,  some 
remaining  at  the  Society's  room  in  the  Strand  and  some  exhibiting 
at  the  Great  Room,  Spring  Gardens.  These  later  became  the 
"  Incorporated  Artists,"  and  continued  to  hold  exhibitions  with 
increasing  success  until  their  very  prosperity  caused  their  downfall. 
The  money  received  from  admission  fees  accumulated  until  it 
became  a  large  sum,  and  the  projects  for  the  disposition  of  this  gave 
rise  to  such  unseemly  bickerings  that  a  number  of  the  artists, 
including  West,  who  was  a  director,  and  Reynolds,  withdrew  from 
the   association. 

There  was  difficulty  about  forming  another  society.  Reynolds 
was  but  lukewarm  and  hesitated  about  committing  himself.  When 
the  dissenting  artists  met  for  organization,  neither  West  nor 
Reynolds  were  present,  and  after  a  long  wait  they  were  on  the  point 
of  adjourning  when  both  appeared.  West  having  through  his  posi- 
tion at  court  secured  the  favor  of  the  King  had  gone  to  Reynolds's 
house  and  decided  him  to  attend  the  meeting,  which  immediately 
proceeded  to  organize  the  Royal  Academy  and  elect  Reynolds 
president.      The  first  exhibition  was  held  in  1768. 

West  was  now  in  the  full  tide  of  success.  He  had  early  set  up 
an  extensive  establishment  with  long  galleries  and  a  lofty  suite  of 
painting  rooms,  filled  with  sketches  and  ])ictures  by  himself  and 
some  works  of  the  old  masters.  Here  he  worked  with  unremitting 
industry,  and  here  he  received  with  unfailing  kindness  all  who  came 


CAREER   Ol-    BENJAMIN    WEST  53 

lo  ask  his  aid  or  advice.  Mis  ])icturL's  were  mostly  commanded  by 
the  Kini;-,  wlio  gave  to  liim  a  yearly  salary  of  a  thousand  pounds  in 
addition  to  payment  for  specific  work.  When  the  royal  chapel 
was  api)roaching  completion,  he  was  engaged  to  cover  the  walls  of 
the  hall  of  Windsor  Castle  with  scenes  from  the  life  of   Edward  III. 

In  1792,  upon  the  death  of  Reynolds,  West  was  unanimously 
elected  president  of  the  Royal  Academy.  His  first  reverse  came 
when  the  King's  mind  began  to  fail  and  Wyatt,  tlie  royal  architect, 
without  preliminary  warning,  announced  to  him  that  the  pictures 
being  painted  for  the  chapel  at  Windsor  must  be  suspended.  He 
appealed  and,  on  the  King's  regaining  his  senses,  was  most  kindly 
received  and  told  to  go  on  with  his  work,  but  this  was  their  last 
interview.  The  old  King's  madness  became  incurable  and  on  his 
superannuation  all  of  West's  commissions  were  countermanded  and 
his  yearly  salary  stopped,  and  now  "he  submitted  in  silence  —  he 
neither  remonstrated  nor  complained." 

While  suffering  these  rebuffs  he  was  also  deposed  from  the 
presidency  of  the  Academy  (in  1801).  He  had  taken  advantage  of 
the  Peace  of  Amiens  in  that  year  to  go  to  Paris  and  see  the  collec- 
tions of  art  plundered  from  the  whole  of  Europe  and  brought 
together  in  the  Louvre.  He  was  received  with  much  honor  by  the 
French  artists  and  statesmen,  and  he  was  filled  with  admiration  for 
Napoleon  and  his  schemes  for  the  regeneration  of  Europe.  He  had 
two  interviews  with  the  Emperor,  and  the  accuracy  with  wiiich  he 
judged  his  character  may  be  gathered  from  his  recommending  con- 
fidently to  him  the  example  of  Washington.  This  visit  was  sup- 
posed to  have  offended  the  King  and  so  West  was  replaced  in  the 
presidency  by  Wyatt.  But  the  reverse  was  only  temporary.  The 
King's  favor  in  his  lucid  intervals  remained  unchanged,  and  Wyatt 
was  so  manifestly  unable  to  fill  the  place  that  West  was  reelected 
president  the  next  year  with  but  one  dissenting  vote  wiiich  Fusel i 
admitted  that  he  cast  for  Mrs.  Moser,  saying  "  one  old  woman  is  as 
good  as  another."     West  retained  the  office  until  his  death. 

In  spite  also  of  loss  of  royal  patronage  and  advancing  years, 
his  greatest  popular  successes  were  yet  to  come.  He  was  applied 
to  for  a  subscription  toward  the  building  of  the  Philadelphia  Hos- 
pital, and    replied    that   his   means    would   not   permit  him   to  offer 


54 


HISTORY    OF   AMKRICAX    PAINTING 


money,  but  that  he  would  give  a  picture,  and  for  the  purpose  painted 
an  enormous  composition  of  "  Christ  lieaHng  the  Sick,"  which  when 
exhibited  in  London  created  a  sensation.  The  British  Institution 
offered  three  thousand  guineas  for  it,  which  could  not  well  be 
refused  ;  but  a  replica  (with  some  changes)  was  painted  and  sent 
to  America,  where  its  exhibition  was  a  permanent  source  of 
revenue  for  the  Hospital,  earning  $4000  from  admission  fees 
in  the  first  year.  This  was  followed  by  a  series  of  huge  religious 
paintings,  the  "  Descent  of  the  Hol\-  Spirit  at  the  Jordan,"  a  "  Cruci- 


l-M 


\\  KM  :    Di-.AiH  (IN    iiiK  Talk  IIok^k,  Pknnnvlvama  Academy. 


fixion,"  sixteen  by  twenty-eight  feet,  an  "  Ascension,"  the  "  Inspira- 
tion of  Peter,"  "  Christ  Rejected,"  seventeen  by  twenty-two  feet, 
and  finally  "  Death  on  the  Pale  Horse,"  fifteen  by  twenty-six  feet. 
This  latter  was  painted  from  a  smaller  picture  which  he  had  taken 
with  him  to  I^aris,  and  which  his  admirers  there  had  declared  to  equal 
the  old  masters.  All  of  these  were  admired  both  by  the  critics  and 
the  greater  j3ublic.  The  "  Death  on  the  Pale  Horse,"  in  particular, 
was  successful  in  exciting  emotions  which  their  possessors  believed 
to  be  noble  and  profitable. 

But  the  admirers  of  these  works  seldom  bought,  and  the  pictures 
were  disposed  of  with  difficulty.     West,  in  spite  of  his  splendid  con- 


CAREER   OF    BEN  [AM  I  \    WEST 


55 


stitution  and  regular  life,  was  getting  old.  In  1S17  his  wife,  to 
whom  he  had  been  married  over  fifty  years,  died,  and  it  was  a  hard 
blow  to  him.  He  painted  up  to  the  last,  but  in  1820,  in  his  eighty- 
second  year,  he  too  succumbed,  and  was  buried  in  St.  Paul's  near 
Reynolds  and  Wren,  with  splendid  ceremonies. 

The  career  of  West  is  calculated  to  confute  the  pessimists  who 
find  no  good  in  human  nature.  It  is  not  so  much  that  he  was 
a  good  man  himself ;  good  men  there  have  ever  been,  but  as  a  rule 
their  good  deeds  shone  in  a  naughty  world.  West  was  not  only 
good  himself,  but  the  cause  of  goodness  in  others.  Surely  no  man 
was  ever  so  generously  and  so  efficiently  aided  throughout  his 
whole  career.  From  the  painted  savages  of  the  forest  to  the  King 
on  his  throne,  all  delis^hted  in  beins:  of  use  to  him,  and  he  never 
failed  to  accept  the  proffered  help,  never  failed  to  utilize  it  to  the 
fullest  extent,  and  never  forgot  to  be  grateful.  At  the  end  of  his 
life  he  remembered  his  first  patrons  who  had  given  him  a  few 
dollars  for  his  works,  and  it  was  at  his  request  that  Gait  recorded 
their  names. 

It  is  not  enouo-h,  however,  that  friends  should  be  willinor  to  aid: 
they  must  aid  wisely,  and  here  West's  good  fortune  shines.  He 
was  lucky,  lucky  from  the  beginning  in  having  parents  who,  contrary 
to  all  expectation  from  their  creed  and  surroundings,  were  interested 
in  and  encouraged  his  childish  scrawls  ;  lucky  in  getting  a  paint-box, 
and  lucky  in  coming  in  contact  with  Williams,  a  practising  painter. 
The  loan  of  the  "  works  of  Fresnoy  and  Richardson  "  were  factors 
of  the  utmost  importance  in  deciding  his  choice  of  a  profession. 
Both  works  have  become  antiquated  now,  but  both  had  a  great 
vogue  in  their  time.  Fresnoy  was  Charles  Alphonse  Dufresnoy,  a 
French  painter  of  the  seventeenth  century,  whose  Latin  poem  Dc  Arte 
Graphica,  modelled  on  the  Horatian  plan,  described  the  nobility  and 
utility  of  art,  and  laid  down  rules  for  simplicity  of  composition, 
breadth  of  light  and  shade,  and  the  like.  Dryden,  among  his  other 
works  as  a  publisher's  hack,  turned  out  a  translation  in  English 
prose  in  a  week,  which  must  have  been  the  version  West  received. 
A  later  metrical  rendering  had  notes  added  by  Reynolds  himself. 
The  other  work,  Richardson  on  Painting,  was  an  English  treatise 
written  in  much  the  same  spirit,  wherein  "  the  whole  art  of  painting 


56  HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

is  di\idecl  into  Invention,  Expression,  Composition,  Colour,  Han- 
dling and  Grace  and  Greatness,"  with  chapters  on  each.  A  second 
book,  the  Couuoissciir,  gives  rules  for  judging  pictures  with  a  certain 
number  of  points  for  each  quality  by  adding  up  which  the  merit  of 
the  work  is  definitely  ascertained,  and  also  a  description  of  the 
works  of  the  great  masters  and  of  the  qualities  peculiar  to  each.  It 
is  written  in  the  taste  of  the  time,  but  with  clearness,  enthusiasm, 
and  much  good  sense,  and  is  eminently  calculated  to  arouse  a  boy's 
ambition.  Dr.  Johnson  writes  :  "  The  true  genius  is  a  mind  of  large 
general  powers  accidentally  determined  to  sonie  particular  direction. 
Sir  Joshua  Reynolds,  the  greatest  painter  of  the  present  age,  had 
the  first  fondness  for  his  art  excited  by  the  perusal  of  Richardson's 
treatise." 

Both  the  fact  and  the  moral  reflection  might  be  equally  well 
applied  to  West.  Leslie  even,  who  doubts  such  decisive  effect 
of  any  book,  yet  adds,  "  if  ever  books  could  infuse  a  love  of  art  and 
an  ambition  to  shine  as  a  painter,  into  a  mind  hitherto  insensible 
to  such  things,  Richardson's  discourses  would  be  the  most  likely 
to  do  so."  That  West  promptly  caught  the  "  ambition  to  shine 
as  a  painter"  is  shown  by  the  story  of  his  ride  on  a  horse  with 
a  boy  who  avowed  his  intention  of  becoming  a  tailor:  a  decision 
he  supported  so  firmly  and  with  such  good  and  prosaic  reasons 
that  West,  who  had  determined  to  be  a  painter,  a  person  whom  he 
defined  to  his  friend's  amazement  as  "  a  companion  of  Kings  and 
Emperors,"  refused  to  ride  longer  on  the  same  beast  with  him. 
Long  afterward,  "  when  directing  his  friend  Sully  how  to  find 
the  house  in  which  he  was  born,  the  old  gentleman  in  describing 
the  road  pointed  out  the  spot  where  he  had  abandoned  the  intend- 
ing tailor." 

He  was  lucky  again  in  the  prescience  of  Provost  Smith,  who 
resolutely  filled  his  mind  with  vague  enthusiasm  and  visions  of 
antic|uity  to  the  neglect  of  what  are  ordinarily  considered  the 
principia  of  knowledge;  for  West  remained  an  uneducated  man 
to  the  end  and  was  as  Cunningham  says,  "the  first  and  last  Presi- 
dent of  our  Academy  who  found  spelling  a  difiiculty."  It  was 
fortunate,  too,  that  he  went  first  to  Italy,  so  that  he  was  enabled  to 
appear  in   Iingland  as  an  established  artist  instead   of   a  beginner. 


CAREER    OF    BENJAMIN    WEST  57 

He  was  lucky  in  securing-  the  patronage  of  the  King,  which  was 
ahiiost  indispensaljle  to  him.  But  most  of  all  he  was  lucky  in 
being  by  character,  by  training,  by  countless  little  personal  traits, 
absolutely  fitted  to  the  ideals  of  the  time. 

It  was  an  interesting  London  to  which  he  came,  —  the  London 
which  lives  for  us  in  the  pages  of  Boswell.  It  had  ceased  to  be 
feudal  or  renaissance,  and  had  become  mercantile  and  bourgeois. 
The  glowing,  unregulated  inspiration  of  the  Elizabethans  had  died 
out.  The  writers  wrote  according  to  classical  rules,  and  took  pleas- 
ure in  their  servitude;  and  the  public  delighted  in  the  polished 
verse  of  Pope,  the  allegories  and  visions  of  Addison,  and  the  moral- 
izing of  Johnson,  to  say  nothing  of  those  classical  tragedies  of  whose 
resounding  verse  few  to-day  can  read  a  page  except  as  a  task.  The 
town  was  firmly  established  as  a  world  centre  and  yet  was  not 
become  unwieldy.  Those  of  any  intellectual  prominence  still  knew 
each  other  personally,  and  private  friendships  and  hatreds  still  gave 
flavor  to  work.  The  middle  classes  were  rising  into  prominence 
and  the  authors  and  artists  could  turn  to  the  great  public  and  were 
not  forced  to  submit  to  the  tyranny  of  the  patrons,  though  still  find- 
ing them  serviceable. 

For  artists  it  seems  as  if  there  never  was  another  London  like  it. 
It  was  the  dawn  of  the  only  great  epoch  of  British  painting.  When 
West  came  there,  Hogarth  was  still  alive  (he  died  the  next  year) ; 
Wilson  was  forty-nine,  producing  his  best  work,  but  ignored  by 
the  public;  Reynolds  was  forty  and  in  the  full  tide  of  his  success 
as  a  portrait  painter,  with  a  great  house  in  Leicester  Square  and 
making  ^'6000  a  year;  Gainsborough  was  still  at  Bath,  but  sent 
his  portraits  regularly  to  the  London  exhibitions,  and  removed  there 
himself  in  1774.  The  town  was  full  of  "cognoscenti"  and  "dilet- 
tanti," delighting  to  discuss  art,  though  as  yet  their  admiration  was 
reserved  for  foreign  work.  Hogarth's  splendid  craftsmanship  had 
been  treated  with  contemptuous  neglect,  though  his  engravings 
brought  him  in  large  sums.  Wilson  sold  his  fine  landscapes  to 
dealers  and  pawnbrokers  for  a  few  pounds,  but  even  the  most 
indurated  prejudice  had  to  make  an  exception  in  favor  of  English 
portraiture.  There  was  no  foreigner  then  living  in  England  or  else- 
where ;   no   Holbein,  no  Van   Dyck,  not  even  a  Lely,  whose  work 


^8  HISTORY   OF    AMERICAN    TAIXTIXG 

could  an  instant  bear  comparison  witli  that  of  Gainsborough  or 
Reynolds  ;  and  when  West  painted  the  stories  of  antique  heroism 
or  biblical  \irtue,  whose  recital  had  so  often  awakened  their  sensi- 
bility and  painted  them  in  the  sort  of  late,  impersonal  Italian, 
eclectic  style,  which  illustrated  all  of  the  rules  of  art,  the  more 
advanced  of  the  "cognoscenti"  could  contain  themselves  no 
lono-er;  they  saluted  him  as  a  great  artist,  and   the  public  followed. 

And  yet  it  must  be  admitted  that  his  paintings,  while  essential, 
were  not  the  only  nor  the  chief  causes  of  his  success.  The  story 
of  his  life  was  as  effective  in  London  as  in  Rome.  The  manner 
in  which  in  a  wilderness  inhabited  by  savages  he  was  inspired  even 
from  the  cradle  by  unmistakable  genius,  caught  the  popular  imagi- 
nation, and  every  incident  about  him  tended  to  strengthen  the 
effect :  his  youth,  his  reception  at  Rome,  his  success  there,  his 
membership  in  the  Italian  academies,  the  charm  of  his  manner, 
the  purity  of  his  life.  Even  trivial  things  like  his  picturesque 
comment  on  the  "  Apollo,"  his  discovery  for  himself  of  the  camera 
obscura,  or  even  his  skill  in  skating,  which  his  friend  Lord  Howe 
(afterward  of  Revolutionary  fame)  induced  him  to  display  on  the 
"Serpentine"  —  all  spread  his  name  and  fame.  As  Gait  says,  "It 
would  almost  seem  as  if  there  had  been  some  arranoement  in  the 
order  of  things  that  w^ould  have  placed  Mr.  West  in  the  first  class 
of  artists  although  he  had  himself  mistaken  the  workings  of  ambi- 
tion for  the  consciousness  of  talent." 

Posterity  seems  to  have  decided  that  some  such  mistake  was 
jnade.  j West's  fame  has  steadily  declined,  and  his  works  now  are  , 
seldom  mentioned  except  as  warning  examples  of  false  taste. 
More  than  that,  the  reaction  against  the  point  of  view^  that  he 
represented  in  art  has  now  reached  its  farthest  point,  so  that  he 
is  not  infrequently  held  up  to  scorn  and  contempt.  Hiis  is  unjust, 
for  West  had  talent  as  well  as  industry,  but  it  is  unlikely  that  any 
revulsion  of  artistic  standards  will  ever  restore  him  to  popular 
favor.  The  \ery  character  of  liis  work  is  airainst  it.  Huire  com- 
positions  made  without  feeling  for  the  decorative  necessities  of  the 
places  they  are  to  occupy  will  arouse  the  attention  and  usually  the 
admiration  of  contemporaries,  but  whether  they  line  the  Gallerie 
des   Victoires  of  Versailles  or  the   hall  of  Windsor,  they  are  tedious 


CARKKR    OF    BICXJAMIX    WEST  59 

for  a  later  generation.  .And  sucli  works  must  be  popular  or  they 
lose  all  excuse  for  their  existence.  A  chosen  few  may  cultivate  a 
liking  for  quaint,  obsolete,  old-time  sentiment  in  easel  pictures, 
prints,  or  miniatures,  but  canvases  twenty  feet  or  more  long  are  not 
for  the  cabinets  of  amateurs.  "  Time's  great  antiseptic.  Style," 
miglit  ha\-e  saved  them,  l3ut  they  have  no  "  style."  West  had  not 
even  the  sincerity  which  gives  vitality  to  Copley's  work.  His 
early  portraits  painted  before  he  left  New  York  are  occasionally 
more  graceful  than  the  Copleys  of  the  same  date,  but  they  carry 
no  such  conviction  of  reality. 

After  he  reached  Italy  he  began  to  i)aint  those  "  subjects  the 
moral  interest  of  which  outweighs  their  mechanical  execution." 
He  gained  great  facility  and  an  acquaintance  with  all  the  technical 
expedients  of  his  profession  ;  but  the  rapidity  of  his  production,  his 
admiration  for  the  followers  of  Raphael,  and  his  early  saturation  with 
a  vague  and  windy  enthusiasm  from*  Richardson  prevented  him 
from  ever  gaining  any  mastery  of  beautiful  workmanship.  In  fact, 
he  never  felt  the  need  of  it  and  considered  his  art  mainly  as  an  aid 
to  virtue,  declaring  in  his  discourses  that  "the  true  use  of  painting 
resides  in  assisting  the  reason  to  arrive  at  certain  moral  influ- 
ences, by  furnishing  a  probable  view  of  the  effects  of  motives  and 
passions."  He  painted,  as  a  rule,  thinly  and  had  a  way  of  marking 
out  his  figures  with  a  sharp  outline,  suggesting  work  done  from  an 
engraving.  His  color  was  poor,  the  costumes  of  his  figures  tinted 
in  tones  of  red  or  pink  or  yellow,  arranged  according  to  the  most 
approved  rules  and  relieved  by  dark  shadows  and  backgrounds 
usually  of  a  disagreeable  brownish  tone  produced  perhaps  from  his 
admiration  for  the  old  masters  of  the  Bolognese  school.  Lester 
(in  his  Artisfs  of  America)  sums  up  his  work  in  a  criticism  that  is 
worth  giving  at  length,  for  it  shows  that  the  judgment  of  184S  still 
remains  good  to-day  with  the  exception  that  at  that  time  West  was 
at  least  discussed ;  to-day  he  is  ignored. 

"  In  all  his  works  the  human  form  was  exhibited  in  conformity 
to  academic  precepts  —  his  figures  were  arranged  with  skill  —  the 
coloring  was  varied  and  harmonious  —  the  eye  rested  pleased  on 
the  performance,  and  the  artist  seemed,  to  the  ordinary  spectator, 
to  have  done  his  task  like  one  of  the  highest  of  the  sons  of  genius. 


6o 


HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 


But  below  all  this  splendor  there  was  little  of  true  vitality  —  there 
was  a  monotony  of  human  character  —  the  groupings  were  unlike 
the  happy  and  careless  combinations  of  nature,  and  the  figures 
seemed  distributed  over  the  canvas  by  line  and  measure  like  trees 
in  a  plantation.  He  wanted  fire  and  imagination  to  be  the  true 
restorer  of  that  grand  style  which  bewildered  Barry  and  was  talked 
of  by  Reynolds.  Most  of  his  works,  cold,  formal,  and  passionless, 
may  remind  the  spectator  of  the  Valley  of  Dry  Bones,  when  the 


In;.   13.  —  I'KAii:   Amf.rican  ArAiii:.\n',  Mi:  1  K(_)ri_)Lii an   MrsF.rM. 


flesh  and  skin  had  come  upon  the  skeletons  and  before  the  breath 
of  God  had  informed  them  with  life  and  feeling." 

Something  might  be  saved  from  this  general  condemnation.  The 
"Death  of  Wolfe,"  apart  from  being  a  courageous  innovation,  is  finely 
grouped  and  will  hold  its  own  against  any  of  the  numerous  similar 
scenes  produced  more  or  less  in  emulation  with  it  ;  the  "  Battle  of 
La  Hogue  "  is  equally  good,  and  all  of  his  modern  scenes  have  value ; 
but  it  must  not  be  forgotten  tliat  his  preeminent  success  was  in  no 
way  proportionate  to  a  preeminent  skill,  even  in  suiting  the  peculiar 


CAREER    OF    BENJAMIN    WEST  6 1 

taste  of  the  time.  The  works  of  I'useli,  Barry,  or  Haydon  had  as  great 
elements  of  popularity.  It  was  West's  character  and  temperament 
w^hich  gained  him  wealth  and  honors  while  the  others  struggled  and 
starved.  More  specifically  it  was  the  favor  of  the  King,  but  that  is 
only  another  way  of  saying  the  same  thing.  ])esides,  as  far  as  one 
may  judge,  he  would  ha\'e  succeeded  without  royal  patronage,  though 
not  to  an  equal  degree.  He  had  the  dignified,  kindly,  passionless 
temperament  of  the  Quakers,  and  he  kept  it  throughout  life,  though 
he  relinquished  most  of  the  peculiar  observances  of  the  sect.  Cun- 
ningham says,  "  The  grave  simplicity  of  the  Quaker  continued  to  the 
last  in  the  looks  and  manners  of  the  artist,"  but  Dunlap,  who  knew 
him  well,  denies  this  utterly.  He  behaved  like  other  people,  had  no 
desire  to  wear  his  hat  in  unusual  places,  powdered  his  hair,  dressed 
well,  and  "his  well  formed  limbs,"  as  Dunlap  discreetly  puts  it, 
"  were  covered  by  garments  of  texture  and  color  such  as  were  worn 
by  other  gentlemen."  Leigh  Hunt,  w^hose  mother  was  a  relative 
of  the  artist,  says  that  "  the  appearance  of  West  was  so  gentlemanly 
that  the  moment  he  chane^ed  his  fi^own  for  a  coat  he  seemed  to  be 
full  dressed."  His  Quakerism  was  of  the  spirit,  not  of  the  externals, 
and  it  served  him  well.  His  position  at  court  rendered  him  an  object 
of  envy  to  less-favored  artists.  Reynolds  was  politic  enough  to  con- 
ceal his  feelings,  but  others  were  less  reticent ;  toward  the  end  of  his 
life  his  success,  his  honors,  his  wealth,  and  probably,  to  be  fair,  a 
growing  recognition  of  the  defects  of  his  painting,  unchained  against 
him  a  storm  of  vituperation. 

Peter  Pindar,  w^ho  was  then  enormously  popular,  even  brought 
the  King  into  his  doggerel  rhymes,  beginning  — 

"  Of  modern  works  he  makes  a  jest 
Except  the  works  of  j\Ir.  West." 

and  later  Byron  himself  slashed  at  — 

"  the  dotard  West 
Europe's  worst  daub,  poor  England's  best." 

Hut  West  never  answered,  never  attacked,  nor  blamed  any  one.  This 
might  have  been  policy  or  Quaker  training,  but  no  policy  nor  creed 
will  explain  his  unfailing  readiness  to  aid  or  encourage  others.  He 
had  received  many  benefits,  and  he  conferred   them  still  more  liber- 


62  HISrORV    OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

ally,  apparently  with  no  feeling  that  it  was  particularly  creditable, 
but  rather  that  it  was  the  only  and  inevitable  course;  that  to  miss 
helping  any  one  was  inconceivable. 

He  was  a  quiet,  home-keeping  body,  staying  in  his  own  house  or 
going  to  the  palace,  where  he  had  free  entrance  at  all  times.  His 
presence  at  Gainsborough's  funeral  is  mentioned  as  exceptional  in 
his  retired  life,  and  though  he  had  many  friends,  his  friendships  were 
always  on  a  dignified  and  distant  footing.  He  had  no  part  in 
Johnson's  famous  Club,  and  is  not  even  mentioned  in  Boswell's 
Life.  Johnson,  through  his  friendship  for  Reynolds,  seems  even 
to  have  been  opposed  to  him,  judging  by  his  remark,  "  I  had  rather 
see  the  portrait  of  a  dog  that  I  know  than  all  the  allegorical  paint- 
ings they  can  shew  me  in  the  world ;  "  but  when  the  Great  Chan 
of  letters,  old  and  suffering,  refused  the  offer  of  a  hundred  pounds  a 
year  from  Dr.  Brocklesby,  saying,  "  God  bless  you  through  Jesus 
Christ  but  I  will  take  no  money  but  from  my  sovereign,"  it  was  West 
who  told  the  King  of  it,  and  that  the  old  man  needed  such  assist- 
ance. Fear  of  injury  to  his  personal  interests  did  not  affect  him. 
It  has  been  told  how  he  welcomed  Copley,  who  was  likely  to  become 
a  dangerous  rival,  and  secured  him  royal  commissions.  Haydon's 
works,  too,  were  enough  like  West's  to  be  preferred  by  many,  but 
West  went  to  Haydon's  studio  when  he  was  painting  his  "  Solomon  " 
and  heartily  praised  it ;  at  the  end  of  the  interview,  as  Leslie  relates 
it,  "  But,"  said  the  good  old  man,  "get  into  better  air;  you  will  never 
recover  with  this  eternal  anxiety  before  you.  Have  you  any 
resources.^"  "They  are  all  exhausted."  "D'ye  want  money.''" 
"  Indeed  I  do."  "So  do  I,"  said  he;  "they  have  stopped  my  income 
from  the  King,  but  Fauntleroy  is  arranging  an  advance,  and  if  I 
succeed,  my  young  friend,  you  shall  hear.  Don't  be  cast  down  ; 
such  a  work  must  not  be  forgotten."  In  the  course  of  the  same 
day  West  sent  him  a  check  for  /  15. 

His  unfailing  kindness  to  young  artists  and  students  will  appear 
in  the  lives  of  the  younger  generations  of  Anierican  painters.  They 
were  all  his  ])upils,  and  his  aid,  while  more  essential  to  such  strangers 
in  London,  was  not  limited  to  them,  lu'ery  morning  until  he  began 
to  paint,  at  ten,  his  studio  was  open,  his  counsel  and  assistance  were 
given  freely  and  kindly  to  all  comers.     At  his  death  his  old  servant 


CAREER   OF   BENJAMIN    WF:ST  63 

might  well  say  with  tears  in  his  eyes,  "Ah,  Mr,  Leslie,  whom  will 
they  go  to  now?  "  Nor  was  his  counsel  mere  kindly  platitude.  He 
was  a  successful  master,  his  pupils  reflect  credit  on  him,  and  his 
criticisms  show  not  only  academic  knowledge  but  a  sympathetic 
alertness  in  comprehending  new  work.  When  Constable  showed 
him  his  early  studies.  West  encouraged  him  and  said,  "  You  must 
have  loved  nature  very  much  before  you  could  have  painted  this," 
and  then  after  touching  in  some  lights  with  chalk,  added,  "Always 
remember,  sir,  that  light  and  shadow  never  stand  still!'  Constable 
said  it  was  the  best  lecture,  because  a  practical  one,  on  chiaroscuro 
that  he  had  ever  heard,  and  considering  West's  training,  and  the  fact 
that  Constable  remained  utterly  unrecognized  for  many  years,  its 
insight  is  wonderful. 

The  only  fault  which  his  detractors  can  bring  against  him  is  his 
self-complacency,  and  that  was  in  a  way  essential  to  his  integrity. 
He  could  not  with  clear  conscience  have  occupied  the  position  he 
did  unless  he  had  believed  himself  a  great  artist,  born  for  great 
things,  and  he  did  so  believe.  When  his  work  for  the  King  was 
stopped,  his  letter  of  remonstrance  which  he  wrote  rings  with  a  con- 
sciousness of  merit,  and  his  observation  during  his  trip  in  France 
that  "  I  was  walking  with  Mr.  Fox  in  the  Louvre  and  I  remarked 
how  many  people  turned  to  look  at  me.  This  shows  the  respect  of 
the  French  for  the  Fine  Arts,"  is  naively  amusing,  for  the  "  Mr. 
Fox"  was  Charles  James  Fox,  one  of  the  three  most  pow^erful  states- 
men of  England,  and  a  less  simple  mind  might  have  attributed  some 
of  the  attention  to  him. 

It  is  a  pity  that  his  painting  had  no  more  enduring  qualities,  but 
he  was  a  noble  figure  to  begin  the  series  of  American  painters.  He 
was  the  first  to  attain  prominence,  and  he  remains  to  this  day  the 
most  successful.  Tuckerman,  who  is  not  well  disposed  toward  him^ 
yet  says  truly,  "  His  reputation  has  a  benign,  conservative  charm 
based  upon  rectitude  and  benevolence ;  exemplary  in  life,  kindly  in 
spirit,  more  than  one  generation  of  American  Artists  had  cause  to 
bless  his  memory." 


CHAPTER    IV 

;  EARLY    PUPILS    OF   WEST    IN    LONDON 

West's  Studio  from  the  Begixxixg  the  Resort  of  American  Students.  — 
iMathew  Pratt.  —  Abraham  Delanoy.  —  Charles  Wilson  Peale.  —  His  Versa- 
tility.—  His  Work.  —  Later  Pupils.  —  Dunl.ap  and  his  "History  of  the  Arts 
OF  Design  in  America." — His  Life.  —  Robert  Fulton.  —  Ralph  Earle.  —  Gilbert 
Stuart.  —  Life  in  Newport.  —  Life  in  London.  —  Introduction  to  West 

When  West  came  to  England  he  was  still  a  very  young  man, 
but  from  the  first  he  took  the  position  of  counsellor  and  helper 
toward  his  compatriots  who  came  there  to  perfect  themselves  in  the 
fine  arts,  and  up  to  the  time  of  his  death  the  stream  of  American 
painting  may  be  said  to  have  flowed  through  his  studio.  The  com- 
mencement of  his  teaching  coincided  with  his  decision  to  perma- 
nently settle  in  London,  for  his  wife  and  his  first  pupil  came  to  him  at 
the  same  time.  Wlien,  in  1764,  West's  father  brought  to  England 
Miss  Shewell,  his  future  bride,  Mathew  Pratt,  who  was  a  relative  of 
the  lady,  accompanied  them  and  became  a  member  of  West's  house- 
hold. Pratt  was  a  Philadelphian  a  few  years  the  senior  of  West  and 
was  already  a  practising  artist,  having  been  apprenticed  at  the  age 
of  fifteen  to  his  uncle,  James  Claypoole,  from  whom  he  learned  "all 
the  different  branches  of  the  painting  business,  particularly  portrait 
painting,"  the  phrase  showing  the  standing  of  art  in  the  colonies  at 
that  time.  He  followed  his  profession  for  some  years  in  Philadel- 
phia, diversified  only  by  a  trading  venture  to  Jamaica,  which  turned 
out  most  unfortunately,  for  he  was  captured  and  plundered  by  a 
P^rench  privateer  and  lost  a  great  part  of  his  property.  He  received 
from  West  (to  use  his  own  words)  "  the  attentions  of  a  friend  and  a 
brother,"  remained  in  England  .some  four  years,  perfecting  himself  in 
his  art  which  he  continued  to  practise  afterward  in  Philadelphia 
with  reasonable  success.  He  painted  portraits;  he  painted  groups 
which  were  favorably  spoken  of,  but  his  crowning  achievements  seem 
to  have  been  his  signs,  of  which  he  painted  many,  and  Neagle  says 
they  were  the  best  he  ever  saw.      He  also  a.ssisted   C.  W.   Peale  in 

64 


FIG.  14.  — C.  W.  PEALE:  WASHINGTON,  METROPOLITAN  MUSEUM. 


1 


EARr,V    I'Ul'II-S    OF    WKST    IN    LONDON  67 

setting-  up  his  nuiseuni  and  lived  to  a  good  age,  successful  in  his 
modest  art.  Tradition  says  of  him  that  "he  was  a  gentleman  of 
pleasing  manners,  and  a  great  favorite  with  the  first  citizens  in  point 
of  wealth  and  intelligence." 

In  1756  Pratt  exhibited  in  Spring  (iardens  a  painting  now  in  the 
New  York  Metropolitan  Museum,  "  The  American  Academy,"  a 
representation  of  the  interior  of  West's  studio  with  West  himself 
giving  instruction,  and  four  pupils,  including  himself,  diligently 
emplo)'ed  in  copying  casts.  One  of  these  was  a  student  whom  West 
had  about  this  time  and  who  pursued  much  the  same  ideals  as  Pratt, 
but  with  less  success.  This  was  Abraham  Delanoy,  Jr.,  who  visited 
England  al^out  1766.  His  father  was  Abraham  Delanoy  of  New 
York,  to  the  merit  of  whose  pickled  oysters  and  lobsters  Fate  has 
granted  an  endurance  of  fame  denied  to  the  art  of  his  son.  The 
latter  made  but  a  short  stay  in  London,  and  on  his  return  painted 
what  portraits  he  could.  In  January  of  1771  there  appeared  this 
advertisement  in  the  New  York  Gazette  and  the  Weekly  Mercury  :  — 

"  To  the  Publick 

LIKENESSES 

Painted  for  a  reasonable  price  by  A.  Delanoy  Jr.  who  has  been 
taught  by  the  celebrated  Mr.  Benjamin  West  in  London." 

Less  than  six  months  after  another  advertisement  shows  that  he 
had  old  Madeira  and  other  wines  for  sale  and  a  large  list  of  groceries, 
but  the  notice  ends  with,  "  Most  kinds  of  Painting  done  as  usual  at 
reasonable  rates."  Dunlap  knew  him  a  dozen  years  later  and  pitied 
him.  "  He  was  consumptive,  poor  and  his  only  employment  sign- 
painting."  He  describes  him  further  as  "  of  mild  manners,  awkward 
address  and  unpresupposing  appearance.  I  presume  he  died  about 
17S6." 

Pratt  and  Delanoy  were  fair  examples  of  the  ordinary  practitioner' 
of  painting  in  America  at  the  time,  lineal  descendants  of  still  earlier 
men.  They  multiplied  in  numbers  toward  the  end  of  the  century, 
travelling  from  city  to  city  and  gaining  a  precarious  livelihood  by 
painting  portraits  at  a  few  dollars  a  head,  and  when  that  failed  turn- 
ing; to  the  more  mechanical  branches  of  their  trade.      Records    of 


68  HISTORY    OF    AMl.RICAX    PAINTING 

them  crop  up  in  old  letters  and  diaries,  and  Dunlap  has  preserved 
the  names  of  some  like  the  three  generations  of  Parissiens,  of  French 
extraction,  —  father,  son,  and  grandson,  —  who  painted  portraits  and 
miniatures  of  varying  atrocity  in  New  York;  or  Woolaston,  in  whose 
honor  Francis  Hopkinson  published  laudatory  verses  in  1758.  Other 
men  of  this  type  besides  Delanoy  got  together  enough  mone}'  to 
make  the  trip  to  England  and  there  received  counsel  of  West,  and 
have  a  right  to  be  numbered  among  his  pupils;  but  their  names  and 
works  ha\'e  made  no  record. 

The  next  artist  whom  we  know  to  have  worked  under  West  was 
Charles  Wilson  Peale,  a  man  of  a  higher  class.  Even  judged  by 
the  European  standard  he  was  a  passable  painter,  and  he  is  also 
interesting  as  a  type  of  the  ingenious  mind  that  could  turn  to  any- 
thing and  that,  from  instability  or  necessity,  frequently  deserted  art 
for  other  pursuits.  This  inventive,  mechanical  genius  is  supposed 
to  be  the  birthright  of  the  Yankee,  but  it  was  in  Chesterton,  Mary- 
land, that  Peale  was  born  in  1741.  As  a  boy  he  was  apprenticed  to 
a  saddler  in  Annapolis,  and  his  natural  versatility  made  him  also  a 
coach-maker,  a  clock-maker,  a  silversmith,  and  finally  the  sight  of 
some  paintings  by  a  Mr.  Frazier  inspired  him  to  add  painting  to  his 
other  accomplishments. 

During  a  trip  to  Philadelphia  he  procured  painting  materials  and 
a  book  to  instruct  him,  TJic  Handmaid  of  tJic  Ai'ls,  and  on  his  return 
to  Annapolis  an  English  artist,  Hesselius,  gave  him  some  instruction. 
Soon  after  he  had  a  chance  to  make  the  voyage  to  Boston,  passage 
free,  in  a  schooner  belonging  to  his  brother-in-law,  and  promptly 
availed  himself  of  the  opportunity.  As  has  been  mentioned,  he 
saw  Copley,  was  kindly  received  by  him  and  had  a  picture  loaned 
him  to  copy.  This  was  in  i  768-1 769,  and  his  stay  in  Boston  was  not 
long.  He  wished  to  go  to  England,  and  on  his  return  to  Annapolis 
a  number  of  gentlemen  raised  a  sum  of  mone}' sufficient  foi-  his  needs, 
which  he  ])romised  to  repay  in  i)ictures  on  his  return.  He  reached 
Lniidon  the  next  year  with  letters  to  West,  who  aided  him  in  his 
kindly  way,  and  when  at  the  end  of  a  year  Peale's  scanty  funds  were 
exhausted,  received  him  into  his  own  house  so  that  he  might  not 
lose  the  benefits  antic  i])ated  from  his  voyage.  Peale  returned  from 
London  to  Annajjolis  in   1774,  but   two  years  later  came  to  Philadel- 


YlG.    Is.  — C.   W.    ri.AL.L  : 


ruRTRAIT   UF   THE    PAINTER,  PENNSYLVANIA   ACADl-MV. 


EARLY    PUPILS  OF   WEST   IN    LONDON 


71 


pliia,  and  as  a  cajjtain  of  volunteers  joined  Washington,  and  was 
present  at  tlie  battles  of  Trenton  and  (iermantoun.  Ex-en  in  the 
midst  of  wars  alarms  he  ct)ntinued  to  practise  his  art,  and  his  diary 
of  the  time  is  a  curious  jumble  of  marches,  casualties,  and  sittings 
for  miniatures.  In  1779  he  left  the  army  and  represented  Phila- 
delphia in  the  Pennsylvania  legislature,  but  continued  his  painting 
until,  in  1785,  the  finding  of  the  bones  of  a  mastodon  caused  him  to 
conceive  the  idea  of  forming  a  museum.  All  sorts  of  curiosities 
rapidly  accumulated,  so  that  he  finally  removed  his  collection  to  a 
hall  specially  enlarged  for  the  purpose  and  there  lectured  on  Natural 
History  before  the  most  distinguished  citizens.  In  the  light  of 
modern  science  he  may  not  have  discoursed  very  wisely  about  "  the 
Mammoth,  or  great  American  Incognitum,  an  extinct  immense  car- 
nivorous animal  "  (to  quote  from  the  title  of  a  tract  by  his  son  Rem- 
brandt), but  his  observations  and  opinions  were  important  enough  at 
the  time  to  lead  to  a  considerable  correspondence  with  Cuvier  and 
other  prominent  naturalists.  In  spite  of  these  scientific  excursions, 
however,  he  still  painted  portraits  and  retained  his  interest  in  the 
fine  arts.  He  opened  a  school,  attempted  to  have  exhibitions,  and 
after  several  failures  was  finally  instrumental  in  founding,  in  1805, 
the  Pennsylvania  Academy  of  the  Fine  Arts,  which  still  remains  a 
flourishing  institution  and  the  oldest  of  the  sort  in  the  United  States. 
Peale  painted  fairly  good  portraits,  by  far  the  best  that  were 
executed  in  the  country  between  Copley's  departure  in  1774  and  the 
return  of  Stuart  in  1793.  His  earlier  works  show  strongly  the 
influence  of  Copley:  not  only  what  in  Copley  was  the  development 
and  culmination  of  the  characteristics  of  the  early  colonial  practi- 
tioner, but  also  personal  traits,  the  stiffness  of  pose,  the  rawness  of 
tone,  even  the  difificulty  of  drawing  the  eyes,  which  is  still  noticeable 
in  his  early  portrait  of  Washington.  He  never  attained  to  Copley's 
sincerity,  but  he  mitigated  somewdiat  his  crudity  of  coloring.  In  his 
later  work  the  effects  of  his  foreign  travel  are  manifest  in  a  greater 
facility  and  in  a  greater  knowledge  —  it  improved  as  he  grew  older 
and  lost  entirely  (probably  owing  to  his  study  under  West)  its  archaic 
colonial  stiffness.  A  full-length  portrait  of  himself  at  the  age  of 
eighty-three,  drawing  a  curtain  and  displaying  the  marvels  of  his 
museum,  is  in  the   Philadelphia    Academy.     The    background    and 


72  HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

details  are  thinly  painted  in  West's  worst  manner,  but  the  head  is 
excellent,  well  drawn,  well  lighted,  and  solidly  painted.  It  shows 
him  as  he  was,  a  hale  old  man  who  had  never  known  sickness  and 
who  died  in  1827  not  from  old  age  but  through  incautiously  expos- 
ing himself.  He  had  had  many  children  and  had  seen  fit  to  impose 
upon  them  the  most  distinguished  names,  so  that  he  could  boast  him- 
self the  father  of  Raphael,  Angelica  Kauffman,  Rembrandt,  Rubens, 
and  Titian.  In  spite  of  their  titles,  however,  only  two  were  prom- 
inent in  art. 

Rembrandt  Peale,  who  lived  until  i860  and  who  wrote  many 
reminiscences  of  his  early  days,  says  that  his  father  was  a  fellow- 
student  under  West  with  Trumbull  and  Stuart,  and  even  tells  a 
story  of  West's  remarking  to  Trumbull  in  explanation  of  some 
hammering  noise  that  ''  it  was  only  that  ingenious  young  Mr.  Peale 
repairing  some  of  his  bells  and  locks."  The  story  fits  Peale  excel- 
lently, and  we  know  that  he  did  patch  up  a  broken  and  discarded 
palette  so  that  West  used  it  to  the  end  of  his  life;  but  chronology 
shows  that  Peale  had  returned  to  America  before  Trumbull  or 
Stuart  reached  London.  He  belongs,  in  fact,  to  the  first  group 
of  West's  pupils,  the  successors  of  the  old  colonial  school  whose 
fame  never  spread  beyond  America,  and  not  widely  there.  Stuart, 
Trumbull,  and  Dunlap  are  of  a  later  period. 

Dunlap  was  the  youngest  of  these,  the  last  to  come  abroad,  and 
he  never  was  much  of  a  painter  at  best;  but  he  deserves  an  honor- 
able mention  in  any  record  of  American  art  as  its  chronicler.  He 
is  our  American  Vasari.  His  Ilislory  of  the  Ar'-fs  of  Dcsisrii  in 
America,  ])ublished  in  1834,  is  the  foundation  of  all  that  we  know  of 
our  earlier  men.  He  was  born  in  1766,  so  that  he  was  a  contempo- 
rary of  the  beginnings  of  painting  in  the  colonies ;  he  was  w^th  West 
in  London  as  a  very  young  man,  and  later  his  erratic  fortunes  made 
him  a  wide  traveller  and  gained  him  an  extended  acquaintance. 
He  was  always  interested  in  art,  and  when  in  his  old  age  he  under- 
took to  write  his  history  he  used  not  only  his  personal  recollections, 
but  applied  to  his  friends  and  all  others  who  were  likely  to  know  the 
facts.  Besides  this  he  had  a  feeling  for  accuracy  rare  at  the  time. 
Like  Herodotus,  he  relates  many  fables,  but  he  relates  them  as  they 
were  told  him  and  gives  his  authority.     He  has  been  called  "  the 


EARLY   PUPILS   OF   WEST    L\    LONDON  73 

acrimonious  Dunlap,"  but  the  reader  of  to-day  will  not  find  the 
epithet  justified.  He  wrote  of  men  still  living  or  but  recently- 
dead;  he  wrote  not  only  of  their  works  but  of  their  lives,  and  he 
wrote  something  more  than  mere  indiscriminate  adulation.  He 
had  a  good  eye  for  character,  and  he  had  fixed  moral  standards. 
It  is  only  in  his  pages  that  we  seem  to  touch  the  reality  of  West 
and  Stuart  and  Trumbull  and  Allston  and  Sully.  Men  were  as 
sensitive  then  as  to-day,  and  the  men  of  whom  he  wrote  and 
their  friends  were  displeased  at  his  frankness ;  but  viewed  at  the 
present  distance  of  time  he  seems  rather  kindly.  He  had  his  dis- 
likes, but  he  W'as  harder  on  no  one  than  on  himself.  One  of  his 
charms  is  his  old-fashioned  style,  as  remote  from  that  of  the  present 
day  as  Bacon's,  a  little  ponderous  but  clear  and  animated.  Being  of 
his  time  he  had  to  moralize  some,  but  he  does  it  briefly  and  com- 
pensates for  it  by  introducing  innumerable  anecdotes,  including 
some  remarkably  good  ones.  All  of  his  successors  have  poached  on 
his  preserves,  but  none  has  paraphrased  them  without  loss  of  point  or 
character. 

He  sets  forth  frankly  in  his  own  life  his  intention  to  "  show  the 
causes  that  at  the  age  of  twenty-three,  and  after  a  long  residence  in 
London,  left  me  ignorant  of  anatomy,  perspective,  drawing,  and  color- 
ing, and  returned  me  home  a  most  incapable  painter,"  and  he  suc- 
ceeds in  making  it  perfectly  clear.  He  was  born  in  Perth  Amboy  in 
1766,  an  only  child  of  well-to-do  parents,  and  was  brought  up  in  a 
household  where  the  servants  were  negro  slaves  wdth  w^iom  as  a  child 
he  continually  associated ;  and  he  got  little  discipline  then  or  later, 
for  the  outbreak  of  the  war  obliged  his  family  to  move  several  times, 
and  while  it  filled  his  boyhood  with  picturesque  sights  of  soldiers  and 
camps,  prevented  his  receiving  regular  schooling.  He  had  a  taste 
for  drawing,  arising  perhaps  from  the  fact  that  his  father  had  a 
number  of  w^ell-illustrated  books.  He  began  to  copy  prints,  and 
when  the  family  removed  to  New  York,  his  father  tried  to  find  an 
instructor  for  him.  Ramage  the  miniaturist  was  too  busy  to  take 
pupils;  Delanoy  who  lived  on  Maiden  Lane  was  unprepossessing 
personally,  and  so  William  Williams  was  engaged,  and  Dunlap  went 
to  his  rooms  "  in  the  suburbs,  now  Mott  Street."  He  got  no  serious 
instruction,  but  from  seeing  Williams's  crayon  portraits  he  began  to 


74  HISTORY    OF   AMKRICAX    PAIN  TING 

attempt  them  lilmself.  He  drew  all  his  relatives  and  friends,  and 
finally  strangers  began  to  employ  him  at  three  guineas  a  head.  He 
even  made  a  drawing  of  Washington  and  Mrs.  Washington,  and 
succeeded  in  getting  what  were  considered  likenesses. 

At  this  time,  1783,  Joseph  WVight,  the  son  of  Mrs.  Patieiice 
Wright,  celebrated  for  her  profiles  in  wax  and  her  patriotism,  also 
made  portraits  of  the  same  illustrious  sitters.  The  next  year  Dunlap 
started  for  London.  He  had  begun  painting  in  oil  by  doing  a  head 
of  Lord  Hood  on  a  sisfn  for  Delanov,  who  found  the  likeness  too 
difficult  for  him,  and  he  had  managed  to  paint  a  full-length  portrait 
of  Washington  (presumably  not  from  nature,  but  from  his  earlier 
drawing),  represented  with  the  battle  of  Princeton  very  much 
adapted  from  the  "  Death  of  Wolfe,"  in  the  background.  When  he 
reached  London  he  showed  this  to  W'est,  who  received  him  kindly, 
smiled  at  the  transposition,  and  offered  his  casts  and  his  counsel  to 
the  young  student,  but  to  small  profit.  Dunlap  was  now  a  boy  of 
eighteen,  with  some  money,  with  no  habits  of  steady  work,  and  with 
an  enormous  capacity  for  enjoyment.  He  does  not  seem  to  have 
been  dissipated,  much  less  vicious ;  he  was  simply  too  busy  enjoying 
the  sights,  the  theatres,  the  parks.  He  had,  also,  a  shyness,  a  inau- 
vaisc  Jiontc,  which  prevented  his  asking  counsel  from  those  above 
him.  Either  West  or  Trumbull  would  have  been  glad  to  help  him, 
but  he  rather  avoided  their  advances.  The  reports  of  his  idle  life 
reached  West,  probably  with  some  exaggeration,  and  may  have 
made  him  less  ready  to  offer  his  aid,  especially  as  his  son,  Rafe 
West,  showed  a  tendency  to  be  led  away  into  the  same  paths  of 
idleness. 

After  about  four  years  of  this  life,  Dunlap  returned  to  America. 
He  tried  j^ortrait  painting,  but  his  equipment  was  small,  and  he  was 
conscious  of  the  superiority  of  Joseph  \\^ right,  who  was  his  neighbor. 
After  a  few  years  he  gave  it  up  and  joined  his  father  in  business. 
From  now  on,  through  his  long  life,  he  had  a  most  varied  career; 
business,  literature,  leasing  a  theatre,  acting  as  assistant  paymaster 
of  the  army,  alternated  with  the  })ainting  of  miniatures,  portraits, 
and  great  religious  com])ositions.  He  was  unfortunate  financially, 
always  in  need  of  money,  living  from  hand  to  mouth,  yet  retaining 
the  esteem  of  the  communitv,  and  doiiv'-  what  he  could  to  make  the 


EARLY   PUPILS   OF   WEST    IN    LONDON 


75 


world  better.  An  active  member  of  the  Abolition  Society,  at  his 
father's  death  he  liberated  his  slaves.  He  was  instrumental  in  re- 
establishing the  American  .Academy  of  Fine  Arts,  of  which  he 
became  director  and  keeper,  and  later  he  joined  in  founding  the 
National    Academy    of    Design.      Toward    the    end    of    his    life    he 


Fig.  i6.  —  Dunlap:   Artist  showing  Picture  to  his  Parents,  New  York  Historical  Society. 

painted  some  big  canvases  of  religious  subjects,  and  their  exhibition 
from  town  to  town  brought  him  in  some  money. 

Another  pupil  of  West,  whose  fame  is  independent  of  his  skill  as 
an  artist,  is  Robert  Fulton,  who,  after  painting  portraits  and  land- 
scapes in  America,  w^ent  to  England  as  soon  as  he  was  of  age,  entered 
West's  studio  about  1786,  and  gave  promise  of  becoming  a  painter 
of  merit.  From  there  he  went  to  Paris,  where  he  remained  seven 
years,  worked  at  his  art,  painting  easel  pictures,  and  also  the  first 
panorama  seen  there,  whose  memory  is  still  preserved  in  the  name 
of  the   Passacre  dcs  Panoramas,  where   it   was  exhibited.     Even  in 


76  HISTORY    OF    AMKRICAN    PAINTING 

Pan's,  liowcvcr,  hi>  time  was  mostly  taken  up  witli  experiments  with 
a  submarine  boat,  which  lie  perfected  so  that  it  made  several  suc- 
cessful trips.  Later  his  development  of  the  steamboat  entirely 
stopped  his  practice  of  art  ;  but,  like  Morse  at  a  later  day,  he  became 
a  patron  of  his  old  profession,  and  bought  a  number  of  \W"st's  paint- 
ings at  the  sale  of  the  Boydell  gallery,  including  the  "King  Lear," 
now  in  the  Boston  Mu>eum  of  Fine  .Arts. 

The  same  year  that  Fulton  entered  West's  studio  another  pupil, 
Ralph  Earle,  left  it,  or,  rather,  left  London,  for  he  had  been  there 
twelve  years  and  must  have  been  independent  of  his  master  by  that 
time.  He  had  painted  portraits  before  he  left  America  "in  the 
manner  of  Copley,"  which  was  sim})ly  the  common  manner  of  the 
time,  and  after  his  return  he  continued  to  work  with  success.  Dun- 
lap  speaks  rather  slightingly  of  him  and  says  that  "  he  prevented 
improvement  and  destroyed  himself  by  habitual  intemperance." 
This  charge  it  is  impossible  to  refute,  but  Earle  had  very  creditable 
skill  as  an  artist.  In  London  he  had  been  made  a  member  of  the 
Royal  Academy  and  had  painted  the  King,  and  in  America  he 
painted  many  portraits  fairly  well,  being  especially  skilful  in  arrang- 
ing family  groups,  producing  some  in  New  York  but  more  in  Con- 
necticut, where  he  w^as  the  best  painter  of  his  time  —  his  work 
comparing  favorably  with  that  of  Charles  Wilson   Peale. 

Earle  reached  London  a  few  years  after  Stuart,  and  Fulton  and 
Dunlap  later  yet;  but  the  two  latter  produced  no  important  work 
as  painters  and  the  portraits  of  Earle  belong  by  their  style  to 
the  primitive  period  of  our  art.  Gilbert  Stuart's  painting  is  of  a 
higher  type.  He  was  the  best  of  all  the  earlier  artists,  and  in  fact 
it  is  only  within  comparatively  recent  times  that  we  could  boast 
of  painters  in  any  way  his  equals.  He  was  born  at  Middletown 
near  Newi)ort  on  Dec.  3,  1755,  and  baptized  in  April  of  the  next 
year,  being  entered  on  the  ])arish  record  as  "Gilbert  Stewart  son 
of  Gilbert  Stewart  the  snuff-grinder."  The  spelling  Stewart  may 
be  due  to  the  carelessness  of  the  clerk.  He  never  used  it  him- 
self, but  the  entry  is  also  noteworthy  because  for  a  long  time  he 
signed  his  name  (Jilbert  Charles  Stuart,  the  Charles  probably  being 
inserted  by  his  father,  who  was  according  to  the  family  tradition  a 
strong  Jacobite  who  had  been  forced  to  escape  from   Scotland  after 


FIG.    17.  — EAKLE:     MRS.    BENJAMIN   TAELMxVDCJE,    OWNED    BY    FREDERICK    S. 

TALLMADGE. 


EARLY    I'LTILS    OF    WEST    L\    LONDON  79 

Cullodcn.  He  was  the  son  of  a  Presbyterian  clergyman  of  Perth 
and  was  put  in  charge  of  tlie  first  snuff-mill  built  in  the  colonies  by 
Dr.  ^loffatt,  a  fellow-refugee.  In  this  mill,  which  was  also  a  dwell- 
ing house,  the  painter  was  born.  He  was  the  last  of  three  children; 
the  eldest,  James,  died  young;  the  second,  Ann,  married  and  was 
the  mother  of  Gilbert  Stuart  Newton. 

The  snuff  business  was  not  successful  and  the  Stuarts  moved 
to  Newport,  then  one  of  the  most  flourishing  of  New  England  cities 
and  with  a  society  both  cultivated  and  intelligent.  Here  the  boy 
got  some  schooling  and  even  became  something  of  a  Latin  scholar. 
But  his  spirits  were  too  buoyant  for  a  student.  Dr.  Waterhouse, 
who  was  his  schoolmate,  describes  him  as  "  a  very  capable  self-willed 
boy,  who,  perhaps  on  that  account,  was  indulged  in  everything,  being 
an  only  son  ;  handsome  and  forward  and  habituated  at  home  to  have 
his  own  way  in  everything,  with  little  or  no  control  from  the  easy, 
good-natured  father."  He  was  precocious,  making  at  thirteen  black- 
lead  drawings  good  enough  to  discourage  the  attempts  of  Water- 
house.  It  was  about  this  time  that  he  first  began  to  paint  in  oil, 
and  some  of  his  early  portraits  executed  when  he  was  fifteen  or 
sixteen  have  been  preserved.  There  was  a  considerable  Scottish 
colony  at  Newport,  and  from  the  well-known  clannishness  of  the 
nation  they  would  be  likely  to  feel  an  interest  in  his  early  attempts. 
One  of  the  colony,  a  Mr.  Cosmo  Alexander,  is  said  to  have  "painted 
for  his  amusement,"  and  something  slighting  in  his  tone  toward 
art  offended  Dunlap,  who  suggests  that  he  did  not  know  much 
about  it;  but  he  is  probably  the  Cosmus  Alexander  who  in  1765 
exhibited  a  portrait  in  the  London  Society  of  Artists,  and  conse- 
quently must  have  been  something  of  a  painter.  He  opened  a  studio 
in  Newport  and  received  the  patronage  of  the  Scottish  people  there 
and  through  them  became  acquainted  with  young  Stuart,  whom  he 
liked  so  well  that  he  took  him  with  him  to  South  Carolina  and 
thence  to  Scotland.  Then  Alexander  unfortunately  died  after  com- 
mending his  pupil  to  Sir  George  Chambers;  but  when  the  latter  also 
died,  Stuart  was  left  in  a  difficult  position.  He  finally  reached  home 
in  a  collier  by  way  of  Nova  Scotia.  He  was  in  rags  and  characteris- 
tically would  never  tell  his  experiences,  for  it  was  his  way  to  cure  dis- 
agreeable facts  by  ignoring  them. 


8o  HISTORY    OF   AMICRICAN    PAINTING 

His  foreign  experience  must  have  been  useful  to  liim  in  giving 
him  an  opportunity  to  see  some  good  pictures  and  showing  him  his 
deficiencies,  for  he  set  hard  to  work  to  learn  drawing,  hiring  in 
conjunction  with  Dr.  Waterhouse  a  "  strong  muscled  blacksmith" 
to  pose  in  the  evening.  He  was  now  about  nineteen  and  com- 
menced portrait  painting  in  form,  and  one  of  his  first  works  showed 
a  remarkable  characteristic  —  his  power  of  visual  memory,  which  he 
retained  to  the  last.  He  painted  a  portrait  of  his  grandmother,  who 
died  when  he  was  a  boy  of  ten  or  twelve,  and  the  likeness  was  so 
striking  that  her  son,  his  mother's  brother,  a  prosperous  merchant 
and  banker  of  Philadelphia,  gave  him  commissions  for  his  own 
likeness  and  that  of  his  wife  and  children.  Others  followed  his 
example,  among  them  the  aristocratic  Spanish  Jews  of  whom  there 
were  many  in  Rhode  Island ;  and  then  the  painter,  piqued  at  some 
affront  real  or  imagined,  refused  the  request  of  a  public  committee 
for  a  full-length  portrait  of  Abraham  Redwood  and  received  all 
expostulations  in  sullen  silence,  a  sort  of  twist  of  temper  with  which 
his  friends  became  very  familiar.  This  seriously  diminished  his 
popularity,  and  the  approaching  war  may  also  have  made  portrait 
painting  less  remunerative;  then,  too,  his  friend  Waterhouse,  who 
understood  him  and  to  wdiom  he  could  talk  about  art  and  music, 
left  for  London  in   March,   1775. 

Soon  after  Stuart  followed  him,  just  how^  and  when  is  stated 
in  contradictory  w\ays  by  the  different  authorities.  Dunlap  was 
told  by  him  that  he  embarked  from  the  port  of  Norfolk  in  Virginia. 
Dr.  Waterhouse  says,  "  Mr.  Stuart  was  shut  up  in  Boston  when  the 
first  blood  w^as  spilt  at  Lexington  and  escaped  from  it  about  ten 
days  before  the  Battle  of  Bunker  Hill,"  that  is  on  June  7,  1775. 
Mason,  his  latest  biographer  w^ho  had  the  assistance  of  his  daughter 
in  ])reparing  his  memoirs,  declares  that  "  with  but  one  letter  of 
introduction  in  his  pocket,  he  embarked  on  board  the  last  ship  that 
escaped  detention  in  Boston  Harbor  in  the  spring  of  1775  and 
sailed  for  Great  Britain."  If  this  is  so,  he  may  have  had  the  family 
of  Copley  for  fellow-passengers,  for  there  is  a  not  very  well  authen- 
ticated story  of  Lord  Lyndhurst,  soon  after  he  had  made  his 
fanious  speech  denouncing  the  Irish  as  aliens,  in  blood,  in  language, 
and  in   religion,  being   at  a  public  dinner  and  being  asked  by  the 


FIG.    18.  — STUART:    ELIZABETH   BEALE   BORDLEY,    PENNSYLVANIA   ACADEMY. 


EARLY   PUPILS   OF   WEST    L\    LONDON  St, 

King  across  tlic  length  of  the  tal)le,  "  And  pray  when  did  you  come 
to  the  country,  my  Lord?"  To  which  lie  retorted,  "  May  it  please 
your  Majesty,  I  sailed  from  Boston  on  the  last  ship  that  left  that 
port  carrying  the  English  colors."  Probably  some  confusion  of  this 
story  is  responsible  for  Mason's  statement. 

At  all  events,  in  the  late  autumn  of  1775  Stuart  arrived  in 
London,  poorly  equipped  in  money  and  acquaintances.  His  friend 
W'aterhouse,  upon  whom  he  seems  to  have  depended,  was  away  in 
Edinburgh,  at  the  time,  and  he  suffered  severely.  It  is  to  this  period 
probably  that  the  anecdote  belongs  of  his  entering  a  church  where 
he  heard  the  organ  playing.  Finding  that  there  was  a  competition 
for  the  post  of  organist,  he  offered  himself  as  a  candidate  and  secured 
the  place  at  a  salary  of  ^30  a  year,  for  he  was  as  fond  of  music  as  of 
art  and  had  practised  both  with  equal  enthusiasm.  He  related  this 
anecdote  frequently  in  later  life  and  illustrated  his  skill  by  playing 
on  a  small  organ.  How  long  he  retained  the  position  has  not  been 
recorded,  but  probably  not  long.  When  Dr.  Waterhouse  returned 
to  London  the  next  summer,  he  found  Stuart  with  but  one  picture 
on  his  easel,  and  that  was  a  family  group  for  Mr.  Alexander  Grant,  a 
Scotch  gentleman  to  whom  he  brought  letters,  and  who  had  paid  for 
it  in  advance.  "  It  remained  long  in  his  lodgings,  and  I  am  not 
sure  that  it  was  ever  finished." 

Of  the  doctor's  relations  to  the  painter  we  have  only  his  own 
account,  but  there  is  no  reason  to  doubt  that,  and  it  shows  him  a 
devoted  and  much-enduring  friend.  He  got  him  lodgings,  he  got 
him  sitters,  "  of  my  allowance  of  pocket  money  he  always  had  two- 
thirds,  and  more  than  once  the  other  third,"  twice  he  paid  his  debts 
and  took  him  out  of  a  sponging  house ;  worse  than  the  rest,  when 
he  got  up  a  subscription  for  an  engraving  of  Dr.  Fordyce,  a  popular 
medical  lecturer,  and  incautiously  turned  the  proceeds  over  to  Stuart, 
the  latter  would  not  even  begin  the  portrait.  As  he  states,  "  this  was 
a  source  of  inexpressible  unhappiness  and  mortification,  which  at 
length  brought  on  a  fever,  the  only  dangerous  disease  I  ever  encoun- 
tered. After  my  recovery  I  had  to  refund  the  money,  when  I  had 
not  a  farthing  of  my  own,  but  what  came  from  the  thoughtful  bounty 
of  my  most  excellent  kinsman  Dr.  Fothergill,  who  would  never  after 
see  Charles  Gilbert  Stuart."     In  spite  of  everything,  the  bonds  that 


84  HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAIXFIXO 

united  tlicsc  two  curiously  assorted  friends  never  relaxed.  Stuart 
throughout  his  life  was  recognized  as  exempt  from  the  ordinary 
obligations  of  life;  he  borrowed  and  did  not  pay,  he  promised  and 
did  not  perform.  He  was  improvident  when  providence  was  a  duty, 
and  yet  with  it  all  so  gay,  so  brilliant,  so  talented,  with  a  so  ingratiat- 
ing personal  charm  that  he  was  loved  like  a  child,  and  those  who 
suffered  most  by  his  faults  strove  hardest  to  find  some  excuse  for 
them. 

Stuart  was  in  London  some  three  years  before  he  saw  West. 
This  long  delay  is  strange.  West's  accessibility  was  well  known, 
and  Waterhouse  had  been  introduced  to  him  on  his  arrival  in 
London  by  the  painter's  father.  It  is  only  fair  to  conjecture  that 
Stuart's  temperament  had  something  to  do  with  it,  for  the  visit  must 
have  been  suggested  to  him.  There  are  even  two  accounts  of  how 
they  finally  met.  Waterhouse  says  that  he  "called  on  Mr.  West  and 
laid  open  to  him  his  (Stuart's)  situation,  when  that  worthy  man  saw^ 
into  it  at  once,  and  sent  hini  three  or  four  guineas,  and  two  days 
afterward  he  sent  his  servant  into  the  city  to  ask  Mr.  Stuart  to 
come  to  him,  when  he  employed  him  in  copying."  Sully,  on  the 
contrary,  relates  that  Mv.  Wharton,  an  old  friend  of  West's,  told  him  : 
"  I  was  with  several  other  Americans  dining  with  West  when  a 
servant  announced  a  person  as  wanting  to  speak  to  him  ;  '  I  am 
engaged,'  but  after  a  pause  he  added,  '  Who  is  he?'  '  He  sa3's,  sir, 
that  he  is  from  America.'  That  was  enough ;  West  left  the  table 
immediately  and  on  returning  said,  '  Wharton,  there  is  a  young  man 
in  the  next  room  who  says  he  is  known  in  our  city;  go  you  and  see 
what  you  can  make  of  him.'  I  went  out  and  saw  a  handsome  youth 
in  a  fashionable  green  coat,  and  I  at  once  told  him  that  I  was  sent 
to  see  what  I  could  make  of  him.  '  You  are  known  in  Philadelphia  .f* ' 
'  Yes,  sir.'  'Your  name  is  Stuart.^'  'Yes.'  'Have  vou  no  letters 
for  Mr.  West.'^'  '  No,  sir.'  'Who  do  you  know  in  Philadelphia.^' 
'Joseph  Anthony  is  my  uncle.'  'That's  enough,  c(ime  in,'  and  I 
carried  iiim  in  and  he  received  a  hearty  welcome."  These  accounts 
may  be  partially  reconciled  by  supposing  that  this  was  Stuart's  first 
appearance  after  West  had  sent  for  him,  but  the  relaters  evidently 
are  in  error  in  some  of  the  details. 


MHUI.I.:     KATTLE 


OK  bi;:kk  hill,  vale  school  of  f 


INE   ARTS. 


84 


■1  rt 


aftr, 

come  to  him, 

contrary,  relates  t: 

"  I   Woi.s  with  several  oti 

servant    announced  a  person  a-    Aantn 

en2:ao-eJ/  but  aftc'-   •    ■■  '-^  i^<'  nAA,.A 

that  he  i^  from  . 

immecl:  nd  (v- 

in  the  next  r"(,\i\ 

what  y 

in  a  fa 

to  S-" 

•Y 

f.M-  Mr.   \' 
I '.  )seph 


use  for 

imown, 
•val   in 

e  that 

11--  ot   how 

jst  and 

an  saw 

,vO-days 

Stuart  to 

on  the 


■  i  am 

'vs,  sir, 

c  table 

ig  man 

and  see 

'  youth 

as  sent 

iphia? ' 

letters 

oliij  ■  ■ 

ounts 

'a-st 


^HA  aviiH  no  JOOH^^  a.-AV  ..lu.i  MH.ua  lo  3..nAH  ..i..uh„ 


I 


CHAPTER   V 

STUART    AND    TRUMBULL 

Originality  of  Stuart's  Work.  —  Visits  Ireland.  —  Returns  to  America  and  paints 
Washington.  —  Quality  and  Characteristics  of  his  Painting.  —  Trumbull. — 
Youth.  —  Military  Experience.  —  P'irst  Trip  abroad  and  Arrest.  —  Second 
Trip  abroad.  —  Paints  Battle  of  Bunker  Hill.  —  Third  Trip  abroad  as  Secre- 
tary OF  John  Jay.  —  Fourth  Trip  abroad. — Commissions  for  Decorations  of 
the  Capitol 

It  was  late  in  1778  that  Stuart  entered  West's  studio  and  for 
nearly  four  years  he  continued  to  work  under  him  as  student  and 
assistant.  Waterhouse  left  about  the  same  time  for  Leyden  and  did 
not  see  his  friend  again  for  many  years,  his  place  as  guardian  provi- 
dence being  taken  by  West.  That  he  endured  the  vagaries  of  his 
irresponsible  pupil  was  perhaps  to  be  expected,  but  that  Stuart,  with 
his  sensitive,  passionate  nature,  never  mentioned  his  old  master  with- 
out affection  speaks  well  for  them  both.  How  he  lived  during  this 
period  is  not  clear ;  some  of  the  time  he  was  in  West's  house.  When 
Trumbull  presented  his  letter  of  introduction  in  1780,  W'est,  after 
receiving  him  kindly,  referred  him  to  Stuart  in  an  adjoining  room 
for  painting  materials  and  casts  to  copy.  He  found  him  "dressed 
in  an  old  black  coat  with  one  half  torn  off  the  hip  and  pinned  up, 
looking  more  like  a  poor  beggar  than  a  painter."  Trumbull's  sense 
of  what  was  fitting  for  an  artist,  gained  from  the  establishments  of 
Copley  and  West,  was  naturally  shocked ;  but  Dunlap  suggests  that 
Stuart's  torn  coat  was  probably  only  used  for  painting.  There  is 
also  a  tale  of  Trumbull's  finding  him  once  (date  not  mentioned)  sick 
abed  and  being  told  afterward  that  the  trouble  was  simply  hunger, 
he  having  eaten  nothing  for  a  week  except  a  ship  biscuit.  But  the 
story  had  passed  from  Stuart  to  Trumbull,  from  Trumbull  to  a  Mr. 
Herring,  and  from  him  to  Dunlap,  and  is  of  dubious  verity  ;  certainly 
while  he  was  with  West  he  was  unlikely  to  want  the  necessaries  of 
life. 

85 


86  HISrORV    OF    AMERICAN    PAINTING 

What  the  artistic  effect  of  his  stay  with  West  was  it  is  diiTficult  to 
determine.  He  absolutely  failed  to  acquire  any  of  the  characteristics 
which  might  natural))'  be  expected.  He  shows  no  trace  of  Wests 
handling,  he  got  no  taste  for  composition.  In  fact,  it  is  a  mystery 
where  he  gained  his  technique ;  it  bears  no  resemblance  to  that  of 
Gainsborough,  Reynolds,  or,  least  of  all,  to  West.  Dunlap  tells  a 
couple  of  stories  which  he  heard  standing  by  Stuart's  easel  as  he  was 
painting  a  friend  and  which  illustrate  this  as  also  the  intercourse  be- 
tween master  and  pupil.  "  Mr.  West,"  Stuart  says,  "treated  me  very 
cavalierly  on  one  occasion,  but  I  had  my  revenge.  It  was  the  custom, 
whenever  a  new  Governor  General  was  sent  out  to  India,  that  he 
should  be  complimented  by  a  present  of  his  Majesty's  portrait,  and 
Mr.  West  being  the  King's  painter  was  called  upon  on  all  such 
occasions.  So  when  Lord  was  about  to  sail  for  his  govern- 
ment, the  usual  order  was  received  for  his  Majesty's  likeness.  My  old 
master,  who  was  busily  employed  upon  one  of  his  ten-acre  pictures 
in  company  with  prophets  and  apostles  thought  he  would  turn  over 
the  King  to  me.  He  never  could  paint  a  portrait.  '  Stuart,'  said  he, 
'  it  is  a  pity  to  make  his  Majesty  sit  again  for  his  picture  ;  there  is  the 

portrait  of  him  that  you  painted,  let  me  have  it  for  Lord ;   I  will 

retouch  it  and  it  will  do  well  enough.'  'Well  enough  J  very  pretty!' 
thought  I,  '  you  might  be  civil  when  you  ask  a  favor.'  So  I  thought 
but  I  said  '  Very  well,  sir.'  So  the  picture  was  carried  down  to  his 
room  and  at  it  he  went.  I  saw  he  was  puzzled.  He  worked  at  it 
all  that  day.  The  next  morning,  'Stuart,'  said  he,  'have  you  got 
your  palette  set  .^^ '  'Yes,  sir.'  'Well,  you  can  soon  set  another,  let 
me  have  the  one  you  prepared  for  yourself;  I  can't  satisfy  myself 
with  that  head.'  I  gave  him  my  palette  and  he  worked  the  greater 
part  (A  that  day.  In  the  afternoon  I  went  into  his  room  and  he  was 
hard  at  it.  I  saw^  that  he  had  got  up  to  the  knees  in  mud.  'Stuart,' 
says  he,  '  I  don't  know  how  it  is,  but  you  have  a  way  of  managing 
your  tints  unlike  everybody  else,  —  here,  take  the  palette  and  finish 
the  head.'  '  I  can't,  sir.'  '  You  can't }'  'I  can't  indeed,  sir,  as  it  is, 
but  let  it  stand  until  to-morrow  morning  and  get  dry,  and  I  will  go 
over  it  with  all  my  heart.'  The  picture  w^as  to  go  away  the  day  after 
the  morrow,  so  he  made  me  })romise  to  do  it  early  next  morning.  You 
know  he  never  came  down  into  the  painting  room,  at  the  bottom  of 


FIG.    19.— STUART:    GENERAL   KXOX,    BOSTON    MUSEUM. 


STUART   AND   TRUxMBULL  89 

tlie  gallery,  until  about  ten  o'clock.  I  went  into  his  room  bright  and 
early  and  by  half  past  nine  I  had  finished  the  head.  That  done,  Rafe 
and  I  began  to  fence ;  I  with  my  maul  stick  and  he  with  his  father's. 
I  had  just  driven  Rafe  up  to  the  wall,  with  his  back  to  one  of  his 
father's  best  pictures,  when  the  old  gentleman,  as  neat  as  a  lad  of 
wax,  with  his  hair  powdered,  his  white  silk  stockings,  and  yellow- 
morocco  slippers,  popped  into  the  room  looking  as  if  he  had  stepped 
out  of  a  bandbox.  We  had  made  so  much  noise  that  we  did  not  hear 
him  come  down  the  gallery  or  open  the  door.  '  There,  you  dog,'  says 
I  to  Rafe, '  there,  I  have  you  and  nothing  but  your  background  relieves 
you.'  The  old  gentleman  could  not  help  smiling  at  my  technical  joke, 
but  soon  looking  very  stern,  '  Mr.  Stuart,'  said  he,  '  is  this  the  way 
you  use  me?'  '  Why,  what's  the  matter,  sir.?  I  have  neither  hurt 
the  boy  nor  the  background.'  '  Sir,  when  you  knew  I  had  promised 
that  the  picture  of  his  Majesty  should  be  finished  to-day,  ready  to  be 
sent  away  to-morrow,  thus  to  be  neglecting  me  and  your  promise! 
How  can  you  answer  it  to  me  or  to  yourself?'  'Sir,'  said  I,  'do 
not  condemn  me  without  examining  the  easel.  I  have  finished  the 
picture.  Please  to  look  at  it.'  He  did  so ;  complimented  me 
highly ;  and   I  had  ample  revenge  for  his  '  It  is  well  enough.' " 

The  second  Stuart  story,  told  under  nearly  the  same  circumstances, 
gives  a  view-  of  the  studio  at  a  later  time  when  Trumbull  was  there. 
"  I  used  very  often  to  provoke  my  good  old  master,  though  heaven 
knows,  without  intending  it.  You  remember  the  color  closet  at  the 
bottom  of  his  painting  room.  One  day  Trumbull  and  I  came  into 
his  room,  and  little  suspecting  that  he  was  within  hearing,  I  began 
to  lecture  on  his  pictures,  and  particularly  upon  one  then  on  his 
easel.  I  was  a  giddy  foolish  fellow^  then.  He  had  begun  a  portrait 
of  a  child,  and  he  had  a  way  of  making  curly  hair  by  a  flourish  of 
his  brush,  thus,  like  a  figure  of  three.  '  Here,  Trumbull,'  said  I, '  do  you 
w^ant  to  know^  how  to  paint  hair  ?  There  it  is,  my  boy!  Our  master 
figures  out  a  head  of  hair  like  a  sum  in  arithmetic.  Let  us  see, — 
we  may  tell  how  many  guineas  he  is  to  have  for  this  head  by  simple 
addition,  —  three  and  three  make  six,  and  three  are  nine,  and  three 
are  twelve, — '  How  much  the  sum  w'ould  have  amounted  to  I 
can't  say,  for  just  then  in  stalked  the  master,  with  palette  knife  and 
palette,  and  put  to  flight  my  calculations.     '  Very  w^ell,  Mr.  Stuart,' 


go  HISrORV    OF    AMERICAN    PAINTING 

said  he,  —  he  always  mistci^ed  me  when  he  was  angry,  as  a  man's 
wife  calls  him  my  dear  when  she  wishes  him  at  the  devil,  —  '  Very 
well,  Mr,  Stuart!  very  well  indeed!'  You  may  believe  that  I  looked 
foolish  enough,  and  he  gave  me  a  pretty  sharp  lecture  without  my 
making  any  reply.  When  the  head  was  finished  there  were  no 
Jigurcs  of  three  in   tJie  hairy 

In  1 7S2,  after  four  years  with  West,  encouraged  by  his  master  and 
others,  Stuart  left  him,  took  an  expensive  house,  and  set  up  portrait 
painting  on  his  own  account.  He  had  already  exhibited  at  the 
Royal  Academy,  once  in  1777,  before  he  met  West,  and  again  in 
1779  and  1782,  the  latter  year  having  three  portraits  which  gained 
him  much  praise.  His  success  was  rapid,  his  prices  rose  in  two 
years  from  five  to  thirty  guineas  for  a  head,  and  this,  with  his  rapidity 
of  execution,  meant  a  large  income,  which  he  squandered  with  in- 
credible heedlessness.  Herbert,  in  his  Irish  Varieties,  relates  how 
Stuart  hired  a  French  cook  and  chose  forty-two  persons  whom  he 
found  amusing,  —  painters,  poets,  musicians,  actors,  and  the  like,  —  and 
invited  them  to  dine  with  him.  "  After  dinner  he  said  to  his  friends, 
'  I  can't  have  you  all  every  day  in  the  week,  but  I  have  contrived  it 
so  that  the  party  shall  vary  without  further  trouble.  I  have  put  up 
seven  cloak  pins  in  my  hall,  so  that  the  first  seven  who  come  in  may 
hang  up  their  cloaks  and  hats;  the  eighth  man  seeing  them  full,  will 
go  away  and  probably  will  attend  earlier  the  next  day.  Then  it 
would  not  be  likely  that  any  of  the  party  of  one  day  would  come  on 
the  next,  nor  until  the  time  for  the  forty-two  be  expended,  and  Sunday 
should  not  be  excepted.'  This  compact  was  understood,  without 
trouble  of  naming  or  inviting.  I  had  a  different  company  every  day 
and  no  jealousies  of  a  preference  given  to  any  one.  I  tasked  my- 
self to  six  sitters  a  day,"  said  Stuart,  "  these  done  I  flung  down  my 
palette  anrl  pencils,  took  my  hat  and  ran  about  and  around  the  park 
for  an  hour,  then  home,  got  ready  for  dinner,  approached  my  draw- 
ing-room with  the  certainty  of  meeting  as  clever  men  as  could  be 
found  in  society  ;  and  what  added  to  this  comfort,  I  knew  not  what 
or  who  they  might  be  until  I  saw  them,  and  this  produced  a  variety 
every  day  without  any  trouble.  Oh,  it  was  delightful  solace  after 
such  labor!  I  assure  you,  my  friend,  it  was  the  greatest  of  all 
human  luxuries."     "  It  must   have   been  exj)ensive."     "  It   was  more 


FIG.    20.  — SrUARr:    FRANCES    CADWALADER    (LADY    ERSKINE). 


4 


STUART   AND   TRUM15ULL 


93 


than  I  calculated  on,  but  it  enabled  me  to  supj)ort  my  labor  on  six 
sitters."  "How  did  Mr.  West  approve  of  it?"  "He  shook  his 
head  and  oljserved  that  it  would  eat  itself  out.  It  did  so;  for  in 
about  six  months  the  party  was  broken  up,  some  going  into  the 
country,  others  out  of  the  country  —  John  Kemble,  Irish  Johnston, 
and  others.      It  died  a  natural  death,  greatly  to  our  regret." 

All  of  Stuart's  life  in  London  was  in  harmony  with  this  examj^le. 
He  lived  in  splendor,  l^ecame  a  great  beau,  and  enjoyed  himself 
to  the  full.  Even  marriage  had  no  restraining  effect.  He  treated 
its  obligations  as  lightly  as  others.  His  bride,  whom  he  married 
in  1786,  was  a  daughter  of  Dr.  Coates  and  a  sister  of  one  of  his 
intimate  friends  who,  while  admiring  Stuart's  genius,  knew  ])er- 
fectly  his  reckless  habits  and  did  his  best  to  prevent  the  match  ;  but 
the  painter  had  his  way  in  that  as  in  other  things.  Soon  after 
his  negligence  and  extravagance  produced  their  result,  and  to  escape 
his  financial  and  other  entanglements  he  moved  to  Dublin.  The 
legend  is  that  his  creditors  pursued  him  there  and  that  he  painted 
the  nobility  and  gentry  while  in  jail  for  debt ;  whether  this  be  true 
or  not,  it  is  certain  that  he  found  Irish  society  peculiarly  congenial 
and  had  ample  occupation.  He  stayed  there  five  years,  when  he 
sailed  for  America,  moved  as  he  declared  by  an  intense  desire  to 
paint  the  portrait  of  Washington.  His  natural  restlessness  w^as 
probably  quite  as  great  an  influence,  and  five  years  in  Dublin  were 
sure  to  have  rolled  up  a  mass  of  broken  obligations,  debts,  and 
other  embarrassments  that  it  suited  his  temperament  better  to 
avoid  than  to  meet. 

He  landed  at  New  York  in  1792,  stayed  a  couple  of  years, 
then  removed  to  Philadelphia,  and  there  accomplished  his  wish  of 
painting  Washington.  Stuart  had  mixed  faniiliarly  in  the  most 
distinguished  society.  He  had  painted  portraits  of  three  kings, 
to  say  nothing  of  less  exalted  persons.  He  was  not  embarrassed 
in  the  presence  of  the  mighty;  on  the  contrary,  he  had  snubbed 
the  great  Dr.  Samuel  Johnson  himself.  When  the  doctor,  in 
West's  studio,  remarked  that  the  young  man  spoke  very  good 
English,  and  turning  to  Stuart  rudely  asked  him  where  he  had 
learned  it,  Stuart  promptly  retorted,  "  Sir,  I  can  better  tell  you 
where   I  did  not  learn  it  —  it  w^as  not  from  your  dictionary,"  and 


94  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

Uj'sa  Major  took  the  rebuff  in  good  part.  It  is  a  curious  example 
of  the  reverence  in  which  Washington  was  held,  of  the  aura  which 
surrounded  his  person,  that  in  his  presence  Stuart  was  embarrassed, 
almost  awe-struck.  In  his  first  sittings  the  rattle  of  talk  with  which 
he  was  accustomed  to  divert  his  sitters  failed  him.  Though  the 
President  was  kindly  and  courteous,  he  was  ill  at  ease,  and  the 
portrait  was  not  a  success.  At  least,  Stuart  held  that  it  was  not, 
and  stated  that  he  had  destroyed  it.  He  may  have  destroyed  it 
or  he  may  only  have  said  so ;  it  is  certain  either  it  or  copies  of  it 
bv  him  are  in  existence,  the  best  being:  the  so-called  "  Gibbs-Chan- 
ning  "  picture,  showing  the  right  side  of  the  face.  He  was  so 
dissatisfied  with  the  expression  that  the  President  consented  to 
sit  again,  the  result  being  the  "  Athenzeum"  head  on  an  unfinished 
canvas,  showing  the  left  side  of  the  face,  which  remains  the  accepted 
likeness  of  the  Father  of  his  Country.  He  also  painted  a  full-length 
for  Lord  Lansdowne.  These  were  the  only  portraits  which  he  made 
from  life  ;  but  he  produced  countless  replicas  of  them  all,  especially 
of  the  "  Athenaeum  "  head. 

Gilbert  Stuart  still  holds  his  place  among  our  best  painters,  and 
even  among  his  great  contemporaries  in  England.  His  scope  was 
limited.  While  they  covered  large  canvases  with  full-length  figures 
and  groups,  using  every  aid  of  composition  and  costume  to  produce 
their  effects,  and  showing  the  result  of  this  practice  even  in  the 
arrangement  of  their  half-length  portraits,  Stuart  painted  heads,  and 
little  besides  heads,  as  far  as  known  not  a  single  group,  a  few  full- 
lengths,  more  half-lengths,  a  large  number  of  what  used  to  be  called 
Kit-Kats — canvases  thirty  by  twenty-five  inches,  and  many  even 
smaller  than  that.  The  heads  are  placed  near  the  centre  of  the  can- 
vas, often  so  near  it  that  the  figure,  which  was  painted  in  afterward, 
is  cramped  as  it  would  not  be  if  the  head  were  higher.  There  is  no 
effort  to  diversify  the  attitudes ;  and  the  costumes,  while  skilfully  and 
sufficiently  done,  are  but  accessories  to  the  heads,  and  there  is  no 
attempt  to  make  them  of  important  pictorial  interest.  The  heads 
themselves  are  all  painted  in  a  cool,  diffused  light,  seldom  relieved  by 
heavy  shadows  or  dark  backgrounds.  There  is  nothing  striking, 
nothing  forced  ;  it  is  only  a  head  — a  head  with  its  ordinary  lighting 
and  expression.     No  artifice  is  used  to  throw  it  into  undue  promi- 


FIG.    2i.-M:At;LE:  GILBERT    STUART,  BOSTOxX    MUSEUM. 


STUART   AND   TRUMBULL  97 

ncnce.  Witliin  these  limitations  (and  they  are  serious  ones)  they  are 
unsurpassed.  No  one  of  his  contemporaries  had  a  surer  feeling  for 
the  construction  of  a  head  or  a  surer  insight  into  character.  There 
are  contradictory  reports  of  his  industry  or  indolence  in  studying 
drawing;  but  whether  by  industry  or  nature,  he  possessed  it  thor- 
oughly, as  far  as  the  human  features  were  concerned. 

Where  he  acquired  his  technique  as  a  painter  is  even  more  myste- 
rious. It  seems  to  have  been  original  with  him.  He  could  have  got 
little  teaching  from  Cosmo  Alexander  in  Newport  or  in  his  erratic 
life  before  meeting  West,  and  yet  he  had  exhibited  a  full-length  por- 
trait in  the  Royal  Academy  when  he  entered  West's  studio,  and  his 
style  then  was  already  formed,  as  the  stories  which  Dunlap  heard 
him  tell  will  show.  Exactly  what  the  influence  of  his  stay  in  West's 
studio  was  is  diflRcult  to  determine  ;  the  obvious  effects  to  be  naturally 
looked  for  he  seems  to  have  completely  escaped.  He  got  no  taste 
for  imitating  the  old  masters,  nor  any  liking  for  allegory,  nor  any 
skill  in  composition  or  in  the  handling  of  large  canvases.  We  have 
seen  that  he  consciously  avoided  his  master's  handling.  Dunlap  recog- 
nized their  "difference  of  opinion  and  style,"  and  in  connection  with 
it  mentions  the  following  circumstance  which  took  place  about  17S6, 
on  the  occasion  of  a  visit  to  his  old  master's  house  and  gallery  in 
Newman  Street :  "  Trumbull  was  painting  on  a  portrait,  and  the 
writer  literally  lending  Jiini  a  hand  by  sitting  for  it.  Stuart  came  in, 
and  his  opinion  was  asked  as  to  the  coloring,  which  he  gave  very 
much  in  these  words:  '  Pretty  well,  pretty  well,  but  more  like  our 
master's  flesh  than  Nature's.  Wlien  Benny  teaches  the  boys,  he  says 
"  yellow  and  white  there,"  and  he  makes  a  streak,  "  red  and  white 
there,"  another  streak,  "  brown  and  red  there  for  a  warm  shadow," 
another  streak,  "  red  and  yellow  there,"  another  streak.  But  Nature 
does  not  color  in  streaks.  Look  at  my  hand,  see  how  the  colors  are 
mottled  and  mingled,  yet  all  is  clear  as  silver.'  " 

No  better  description  of  his  own  style  could  be  given.  He 
paints  with  an  unequalled  purity  and  freshness  of  color,  very  delicate 
and  sure  in  the  half-tones,  varying  his  color  to  suit  the  individual, 
but  with  a  pearly  brightness  which  is  characteristic.  The  paint  is 
put  on  thinly,  as  a  rule,  in  short,  decided  touches,  without  heavy 
impasto,  "mingled  and  mottled,"  as  he  himself  says,  and  his  execution 

H 


98  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

was  surprisingly  sure.  Two  or  three  sittings  sufficed  for  a  head,  which 
he  painted  at  once  in  its  true  colors,  disturbing  the  paint  as  little  as 
possible  after  it  was  on  the  canvas  and  without  resorting  to  the  glaz- 
ings and  varnishings  so  much  in  vogue  in  England.  This  sureness 
of  touch  was  the  more  remarkable  because  even  in  his  youth  Stuart's 
hand  was  trembling  and  unsteady;  and  in  his  later  years,  when  some 
of  his  best  work  was  done,  an  eye-witness  says  that  "his  hand  shook 
so  that  it  seemed  impossible  that  he  could  paint.  The  last 
time  I  saw  him  I  think  he  was  painting  the  portrait  of  Josiah 
Quincy  (in  1S24).  Stuart  stood  with  his  wrist  upon  the  rest,  his  hand 
vibrating,  and,  when  it  became  tolerably  steady,  with  a  sudden  dash 
of  the  brush  he  put  the  color  on  the  canvas,"  The  brilliancy  and 
preservation  of  his  works  to-day  attest  the  soundness  of  his  practice. 
He  painted  with  a  restricted  palette,  which  the  curious  may  find  in 
Dunlap  and  Mason,  with  his  method  of  setting  it;  but  let  them  not 
hope  to  produce  the  same  results,  Stuart  s  style  was  his  own.  He 
did  not  learn  it  from  others,  and  though  he  gave  advice  freely  and 
generously,  he  could  not  teach  it  to  any  successor. 

With  Stuart  at  West's  was  Trumbull,  who  was  at  his  best  an 
excellent  artist,  and  whose  w^orks  still  hold  their  rank  not  only  for 
their  historical  interest,  but  their  artistic  merit.  He  was  born  at 
Lebanon,  Connecticut,  in  1756,  the  youngest  of  the  six  children  of 
Jonathan  Trumbull,  later  governor  of  Connecticut,  whose  title  of 
Brother  Jonathan,  given  him  by  Washington,  has  become  a  national 
personification.  John  Trumbull  was  a  sickly  child,  with  the 
mind  more  active  than  the  body,  an  infant  prodigy  of  learning, 
qualified  to  enter  college  at  twelve,  and  who  actually  entered  Har- 
vard in  the  middle  of  the  junior  year  when  fifteen.  He  was  much 
younger  than  the  other  members  of  the  class  which,  together  with 
his  natural  reserve  and  the  fact  that  he  entered  his  class  late,  after 
friendships  had  been  formed,  caused  him  to  make  few  intimate 
acquaintances.  He  spent  his  spare  pocket  money  on  French  lessons, 
and  studied  all  the  i)rints  or  books  on  the  fine  arts  which  he  could 
find  in  the  college  library.  It  was  while  at  college  that  he  made  his 
visit  to  Copley  and  received  his  ideas  of  the  dignity  of  a  painter's 
life.  The  same  year  his  tutor  wrote  to  his  father:  "  I  find  he  has  a 
natural  genius  and  disposition  for  limning.     As  a  knowledge  of  that 


FIG.  22. -TRUMBULL:    GOVERNOR   CLIN  FON,  CITY    HALL,  NEW   YORK. 


STUART   AND   TRUMBULL  lOi 

art  will  probably  be  of  no  use  to  him  I  submit  to  your  consideration 
whether  it  would  not  be  best  to  endeavor  to  give  him  a  turn  to  the 
study  of  perspective,  a  branch  of  mathematics,  the  knowledge  of 
which  will  be  at  least  a  genteel  accomplishment,  and  may  be  greatly 
useful  in  future  life."  The  governor  replied,  "  I  am  sensible  of  his 
natural  genius  and  inclination  for  limning:  an  art  I  have  frequently 
told  him  will  be  of  no  use  to  him." 

After  his  graduation,  in  1773,  he  attempted  i)ainting  with  home- 
made material,  and  also  taugf-ht  school  in  Lebanon  ;  but  war  beine 
manifestly  imminent,  he  began  training  the  young  men  of  the  school 
and  village,  and  after  the  battle  of  Lexington,  when  the  first  regiment 
of  Connecticut  troops  was  formed,  he  was  made  adjutant.  The 
regiment  w^as  stationed  at  Roxbury,  from  whence  the  young  adjutant 
saw  the  smoke  of  the  battle  of  Bunker  Hill.  Later,  when  Wash- 
ington arrived,  Trumbull  was  advised  by  his  brother  to  make  a 
drawing  of  the  British  works  on  Boston  Neck,  which  he  partially 
finished  and  to  which  he  attributes  his  appointment  as  second  aide- 
de-camp  to  the  general.  Dunlap,  who  at  the  end  of  his  life  heartily 
disliked  Trumbull,  says  that  he  always  thought  he  was  appointed 
because  his  father  was  governor  of  Connecticut.  Both  facts  proba- 
bly had  their  weight.  Soon  after,  when  General  Gates  was  ordered 
to  take  command  of  the  "  Northern  Department,"  he  appointed 
Trumbull  deputy  adjutant-general,  with  the  rank  of  colonel,  and  in 
that  capacity  he  took  part  in  the  unfortunate  expedition  to  Albany 
and  Ticonderoga.  There  was  little  fighting,  but  he  seems  to  have 
been  active  and  efficient,  and  likely  to  prove  a  valuable  oflficer;  yet 
when  the  next  February  he  received  his  commission,  he  returned  it 
and  resigned  from  the  army  because  it  was  dated  September  instead 
of  June.  This  was  the  turning  point  in  Trumbull's  career.  Dun- 
lap  argues  at  length  that  Trumbull  was  in  the  wrong.  Professor 
Weir,  in  his  recently  published  memoir,  thinks  him  in  the  right;  but 
whether  right  or  wrong  about  the  proper  date  of  his  commission, 
there  can  be  no  justification  for  his  retirement  from  the  army  in  a 
huff  on  account  of  a  possible  error  of  a  few  wrecks  in  the  commission 
which  made  him  a  colonel  at  twenty.  This  irritability,  this  punc- 
tilio, this  suspicion  that  he  was  being  injured,  this  inability  to 
ic^nore  trifles,  continued  with  him  to  the  last,  and  embittered  his  life. 


102  HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

He  retired  to  Boston  and  in  1778  served  a  few  weeks  as  a  volunteer 
in  the  futile  attempt  to  recover  Rhode  Island. 

This  was  his  last  experience  as  a  soldier;  he  resumed  the  study 
of  painting,  and  in  1 7S0,  under  the  influence  of  Sir  John  Temple, 
sailed  for  France  on  his  way  to  London.  In  Paris  he  met  Franklin 
and  received  a  letter  to  West,  who  welcomed  him  cordially  and  said, 
"  In  an  adjoining  room  I  will  introduce  you  to  a  young  countiyman 
who  is  studying  with  me  —  he  will  show  you  where  to  find  the 
necessary  colors,  tools,  and  so  forth,  and  you  will  make  your  copy  in 
the  same  room."  This  was  Stuart,  who  started  Trumbull  on  his 
studies ;  but  he  had  hardly  begun  when  the  arrest  and  execution  of 
Andre  caused  Trumbull  to  be  imprisoned.  West  hurried  to  the 
King  and  received  his  assurance  that  "  in  the  worst  possible  event 
of  the  law  his  life  should  be  safe."  He  was  permitted  to  choose  his 
prison  and  to  arrange  for  his  comfort.  West  sent  him  painting 
material  and  pictures  to  copy.  Stuart  painted  his  portrait ;  alto- 
gether the  seven  weeks  of  his  imprisonment  do  not  seem  to  have 
been  unprofitable ;  at  the  end  of  the  time  he  was  released  on  bail 
(furnished  by  West  and  Copley)  and  returned  to  America.  He 
became  contractor  for  army  supplies,  but  the  signing  of  articles  of 
peace  put  an  end  to  that,  and  he  had  to  determine  anew  his  future 
occupation  in  life.  His  father  urged  the  law,  but  that  was  revolting 
to  him,  "  being  rendered  necessary  by  the  vices  of  mankind."  He 
"  pined  for  the  arts,"  and  dwelt  upon  the  honors  paid  to  artists  "  in 
the  glorious  days  of  Greece  and  Rome."  To  this  "  Brother  Jona- 
than "  retorted,  "  You  appear  to  forget,  sir,  that  Connecticut  is  not 
Athens,"  yet  yielded  to  the  strong  inclination,  and  in  January,  1784, 
Trumbull  was  back  again  in  London  working  under  West. 

It  was  in  West's  studio  that,  after  a  vear  or  so  of  hard  student 
work,  he  painted  the  "  Battle  of  Bunker  Hill  "  and  the  "  Death  of 
General  Montgomery."  They  are  modelled  after  the  "  Death 
of  Wolfe,"  and  manifestly  owe  much  to  West's  influence;  but  the 
small  scale  demanded  a  technique  quite  different  from  West's  own. 
The  canvases  are  but  twenty-five  by  thirty  inches,  and  the  execu- 
tion has  a  miniature-like  brilliancy.  The  coloring  and  grouping 
is  excellent,  especially  in  the  Bunker  Hill,  which  is  a  remarkable 
achievement  for  so  young  and  inexperienced  a  painter,  and  he  never 


STUART   AND   TRUMBULL  1 03 

quite  equalled  it  again.  After  the  completion  of  these  works  and 
on  the  invitation  of  Jefferson,  at  whose  house  he  stayed,  he  took  them 
with  him  to  Paris,  and  there  saw  David  and  many  of  the  other 
French  artists,  returning  "with  his  head  half  turned  In'  the  attention 
which  had  been  paid  to  his  paintings  and  by  the  multitude  of  fine 
things  he  had  seen."  Encouraged  by  his  success,  he  planned 
a  series  of  illustrations  of  American  history,  and  for  that  purpose 
began  a  series  of  miniature  heads  from  life  which  are  invaluable 
liistorical  documents.  He  painted  the  portraits  of  the  French 
officers  for  his  "Surrender  of  Cornwallis  "  (finished  in  1781)  while 
on  his  visit  to  Jefferson  in  Paris,  where  he  returned  again  a  few 
years  later.  On  this  second  visit  Jefferson  offered  him  the  position 
of  secretary,  which  he  declined,  urging  the  obligation  of  art.  He 
returned  to  America  in  1789  and  continued  the  collection  of  heads 
for  his  historical  paintings,  and  also  worked  on  the  "  Declaration 
of  Independence "  while  circulating  the  subscription  list  for  the 
engravings  of  the  "  Battle  of  Bunker  Hill "  and  the  "  Death  of 
Montgomery."  He  was  successful  in  both  of  these  and  also  painted 
some  portraits,  including  the  full-length  ones  of  Washington  and 
of  General  Clinton,  now  in  the  New  York  City  Hall. 

In  1794  he  embarked  again  for  England,  this  time  as  secretary 
to  John  Jay,  and  while  there  was  appointed  one  of  the  commis- 
sioners "  to  carry  into  execution  the  seventh  article  of  the  late 
treaty,  relating  to  the  damage  done  to  the  commerce  of  the  United 
States  by  irregular  and  illegal  captures  by  British  cruisers."  In 
this  diplomatic  employment  he  spent  seven  years  without  deserting 
the  practice  of  the  fine  arts,  for  he  finished  the  "  Battle  of  Prince- 
ton "  in  1795  and  the  "Capture  of  the  Hessians  at  Trenton"  soon 
after.  On  his  return  to  America  he  tried  again  to  take  a  position 
as  painter  in  New  York,  and  executed  a  number  of  portraits,  one 
of  the  best  being  that  of  Alexander  Hamilton,  which  was  not  done 
from  life  but  from  the  bust  by  Ceracchi.  His  success,  however, 
was  not  sufficient  to  satisfy  him,  and  after  four  years  he  returned 
again  to  London  and  to  West,  and  tried  to  establish  himself  there, 
but  unsuccessfully;  his  return  was  delayed  by  the  outbreak  of  the 
War  of  181 2,  but  as  soon  as  peace  was  declared  he  returned  to  New 
York  with  the  idea  of  utilizing:  his  historical  material  in  a  series  of 


I04  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

pictures.  His  friends  aided  him  and  finally  he  received  a  commission 
to  paint  four  of  the  eight  commemorative  pictures  in  the  National 
Capitol.  He  was  eight  years  at  the  task,  which  he  finished  in  1824, 
receiving  $32,000  for  the  four  paintings.  Trumbull  clearly  merited 
the  commission  from  his  achievements  as  a  painter,  and  from 
the  series  of  portraits  in  his  possession,  of  which  he  could  avail 
himself ;  but  the  event  did  not  justify  expectation.  His  style  had 
changed  and  was  now  but  a  feeble  imitation  of  West's ;  his 
strength  and  inspiration  (always  rather  dependent  on  his  surround- 
ings) had  diminished,  and  the  resentment  of  Vanderh-n  and  others 
at  the  award  long  embittered  his  personal  relations  to  them. 


FIG.    23.  — ALLSTON:    THE    PROPHET   JEREMIAH,    VALE    SCHOOL    OF    FINE   ARTS. 


CHAPTER   VI 

ALLSTON,    MALBONE,   AND    VANDERLYN 

Different  Character  of  West's  Later  Pupils. — Allston.  —  Family.  —  Early 
Years.  —  College  Life.  —  Sails  for  England  with  Malbone.  —  Malhone  and 
Other  Miniature  Painters. — Allston  in  England. — Vanderlyn.  —  His  Life 
WITH  Allston  in  Rome.  —  His  Success  in  Paris.  —  Rembrandt  Peale 

West's  later  pupils  began  life  as  American  citizens.  Vanderlyn 
(born  in  1776)  marks  the  dividing  line,  which  corresponds  here  to  a 
real  division  quite  apart  from  the  accident  of  nationality.  When 
West's  father  wrote  to  him  in  Rome,  in  1762,  that  from  there  he 
should  "  return  home,"  he  meant  that  he  should  go  to  England,  and 
to  most  Americans  at  that  time  "  home  "  had  the  same  significance. 
They  were  colonists  in  a  strange  land,  generally  with  no  expectation 
of  return,  yet  their  hearthstones  were  still  across  the  Atlantic.  They 
were  not,  save  in  exceptional  instances,  from  the  wealthy  or  aristo- 
cratic class,  but  still  they  had  been  in  contact  with  cultured  life  in 
a  land  rich  in  beautiful  and  stately  buildings  and  all  the  adornments 
of  a  long-established  civilization.  They  came  to  the  little  cities  or 
to  the  forests  of  the  New  World  with  a  perfect  knowledge  of  what 
was  lacking  there.  The  fathers  of  West  and  Stuart,  the  father  and 
stepfather  of  Copley,  arrived  in  America  men  grown,  with  their  edu- 
cation and  character  formed.  This  could  not  continue.  The  pro- 
portion of  native-born  increased,  and  of  those  who  had  a  certain 
native  culture  distinct  froni  the  standards  of  England  or  Europe. 
The  effect  of  this  change  increased  with  time,  but  it  was  already 
visible  in  the  group  of  men  who  came  to  West  in  his  old  age. 

The  standard-bearer  of  the  group  was  W'ashington  Allston. 
More  forgotten  now  than  West  or  Trumbull,  he  once  filled  all  who 
knew  him  with  confident  assurance  of  his  greatness;  but  he  left 
behind  him  only  a  few  unsatisfactory,  tentative  efforts,  which  have 
gradually  lost  interest  as  the  charm  of  his  personal  character  becomes 

1.07 


I08  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

a  fainter  and  fainter  memory.  He  was  born  in  1779,  in  the  Waccamaw 
region  in  South  CaroHna,  a  long  strip  of  land  between  the  Wacca- 
maw River  and  the  ocean,  from  three  to  six  miles  wide,  on  which  in 
Revolutionary  times  several  patrician  families  lived  in  a  sort  of  feudal 
state  —  one  of  the  most  distinguished  among  them  being  the  Allstons, 
who  furnished  the  state  with  a  long  line  of  governors,  soldiers,  and 
other  dignitaries.  The  painter's  uncle  was  Colonel  William  Allston 
of  Marion's  staff,  and  a  brother  officer.  General  Horry,  grows  raptur- 
ous over  the  hospitality  of  Waccamaw  lavished  on  the  ragged  troopers 
in  the  intervals  of  the  raids  of  the  "  Swamp  Fox."  The  mahogany 
sideboards,  the  fish,  flesh,  and  fowl  of  the  fattest  and  finest,  the 
pitchers  of  old  amber-colored  brandy  from  "demijohns  that  had  not 
left  the  garret  for  many  a  year,"  and  "  the  smiles  of  the  great  ladies  " 
w^ere  a  w'elcome  change  from  the  forest  camps  and  the  sweet  potatoes 
baked  in  the  ashes. 

Allston's  father  married  twice,  the  painter  being  the  son  of  the 
second  wife.  Before  he  was  two  years  old  his  father  died,  and  when 
he  was  seven  his  mother  married  Dr.  Henry  C.  Flagg  of  Newport, 
who  had  been  chief  of  the  medical  staff  of  Greene's  army  and  who 
settled  in  the  South  after  the  w-ar.  There  was  no  objection  to  him 
except  that  he  w^as  a  Northerner;  but  the  faith  of  the  slave-holding 
whites  of  the  South  in  their  own  exclusive  aristocracy  was  already 
formed,  and  Mrs.  Flagg  w^as  declared  to  have  disgraced  herself 
and  her  family,  and  w^as  disinherited.  As  in  the  case  of  Copley, 
however,  the  marriage  seems  to  have  been  advantageous  to  the  boy, 
betw^een  w^hom  and  his  stepfather  there  existed  always  a  sincere 
affection,  although  they  w^ere  but  little  together.  For  soon  after  the 
marriage,  Allston,  in  the  interests  of  his  health,  was  sent  to  school  at 
Newport,  Dr.  Flagg's  birthplace  and  still  one  of  the  more  important 
of  American  seaports,  with  a  pleasant  social  life  and  artistic  tradi- 
tions of  Smybert  and  Stuart,  and  there  Allston  remained  at  the  private 
school  of  Robert  Rogers,  one  of  the  best  in  the  country,  until  he 
entered  Harvard.  He  show-ed  as  a  boy  unusual  taste  for  drawing, 
and  found  in  the  town  friends  to  assist  and  encourage  him,  and 
particularly  made  the  acquaintance  of  Malbone,  two  years  his  senior 
and  already  beginning  to  paint  miniatures. 

He  entered  college  so  wtII  prepared  that  his  scholastic  duties  sat 


ALLSTON,  MALBONE,   AND   VANDERLYN  1 09 

lightly  upon  him,  and  he  could  take  a  fair  rank  as  a  student  while 
having  time  left  for  more  congenial  things.  He  did  much  miscel- 
laneous reading,  heard  what  music  he  could,  wrote  poetry,  and  was 
cheerfully  convivial  at  times,  according  to  the  standards  of  the  day, 
which  were  somewhat  more  liberal  than  at  present.  His  animal  spirits 
overflowed,  he  took  part  in  college  pranks  and  heard  the  chimes  at 
midnight,  but  with  a  loftiness  of  character  which  kept  him  from  any- 
thing degrading.  He  was,  in  short,  the  radiant  young  genius,  slender, 
graceful,  handsome,  with  blue  eyes,  silky  black  hair,  and  pale,  clear 
complexion,  liked  and  honored  by  the  most  dissimilar  of  his  fellow- 
students  ;  cordial  to  all  and  yet  with  an  aristocratic  distinction  that 
marked  him  as  a  higher  being.  Radiant  with  health,  brilliant  in 
intellect,  with  the  most  delicate  sensibility  and  the  noblest  moral 
aspirations,  to  crown  all  he  was  also  in  love  and  his  verses  were 
inspired  by  the  lady  who  was  afterward  to  become  his  bride.  It  is 
no  wonder  that  he  was  elected  class  poet,  nor  that  he  read  a  poem  on 
Energy  of  Character,  the  lack  of  which  kept  him  from  success. 

During  his  college  life  he  still  continued  to  work  at  art,  drawing 
after  engravings,  copying  the  best  pictures  he  could  find,  and  paint- 
ing some  original  productions,  —  landscapes,  comic  scenes,  groups 
of  banditti,  the  "  Buck's  Progress,"  illustrations  to  the  Mysteries  of 
Udolpho,  and  all  the  natural  contents  of  a  young  collegian's  brain. 
Some  of  these  paintings  were  suiprisingly  good,  and  one  of  them,  a 
landscape  with  figures  on  horseback,  was  afterward  exhibited  at 
the  Royal  Academy,  London. 

Upon  his  graduation  he  returned  to  Charleston,  where  he  was 
welcomed  by  his  relatives,  and  found  there  also  Malbone,  who  had 
been  in  Boston  during  his  college  course,  and  whose  congenial  dis- 
position and  tastes  increased  the  friendship  already  formed  in  New- 
port. Charles  Fraser,  also,  was  making  his  first  efforts  in  art,  but 
wiser  than  most  of  his  fellows  delayed  giving  himself  up  to  it 
entirely  until  he  had  by  practice  of  the  law  gained  enough  to 
insure  him  against  want.  Bembridge,  too,  had  had  his  head- 
quarters at  Charleston,  but  his  vogue  could  have  now  given  small 
encouragement  to  the  ardent  youths,  for  he  had  left  there  from  lack 
of  employment  and  moved  to  Philadelphia,  where  he  married  and 
lived.     A  contemporary  of  West,  he  had  not  gone  to  England  to 


no  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

perfect  himself,  but  remained  at  Rome  several  years  as  a  pupil  of 
Mengs  and  Pompeo  Battoni,  and  returned  to  his  native  land  a  fairly 
skilled  practitioner  to  paint  many  portraits,  now  forgotten,  and  to 
endure  the  usual  privations  and  want. 

Allston  painted  away  industriously,  mostly  at  imaginative  work, 
banditti,  of  course  (they  were  his  favorite  subjects  at  the  time),  but 
also  on  a  composition  of  "  Satan  rallying  his  Hosts,"  and  some  por- 
traits. He  did  not  lack  patrons,  but  his  ambition  was  for  wider  and 
completer  knowledge  and  training.  His  family  would  have  preferred 
another  career,  but  yielded,  not  unwillingly,  to  his  manifest  predi- 
lection for  art.  The  next  year  he  embarked  with  Malbone  for  Eng- 
land, where  he  received  the  usual  kindly  welcome  from  West,  and  in 
return  not  only  gave  him  his  friendship,  but  sincerely  admired  his 
works.  He  placed  him  first  among  living  artists,  and  this  not  on 
account  of  his  earlier  pictures,  of  which  he  had  seen  engravings  in 
America,  but  for  his  later  works,  and  especially  the  "  Death  on  the 
Pale  Horse."  This  love  for  mystery  and  vision  is  characteristic,  as 
is  also  his  praise  of  the  nightmares  of  Fuseli,  for  Allston  delighted 
in  his  emotions.  As  a  child  the  negro-witch  stories  filled  him  with 
delicious  terrors,  and  while  in  college  he  would  steep  himself  in 
romantic  tales  of  mystery  and  horror.  Anything  which  could  stir 
his  feelings  was  sure  of  his  admiration,  even  his  own  boyish  repre- 
sentation of  a  gashed  and  bloody  throat  in  one  of  his  outlaw  pictures. 
Malbone  shared  with  him  West's  aid  and  praise,  and  also  his  admira- 
tion for  the  old  painter;  but  not  for  Fuseli,  who  appealed  less  to  his 
temperament. 

The  friends  saw  together  the  sights  of  London,  especially  the 
pictures  ;  but  Malbone,  in  spite  of  inducements  to  stay  in  England, 
returned  to  Charleston  in  the  winter  of  1801.  Afterward  he  visited 
most  of  the  larger  cities,  and  was  fully  occupied  with  commissions 
for  the  few  years  he  had  to  live.  He  died  in  1807  of  consumption, 
aggravated  by  too  constant  application  to  his  work.  Though  toward 
the  end  of  his  life  he  painted  some  portraits  in  oil  and  landscapes, 
Malbone's  reputation  rests  on  his  miniatures,  which  are  excellent 
and  would  hold  a  respectable  place  anywhere.  He  had  gained,  with 
little  aid  from  others,  a  sound  method  of  work  and  sufficient  skill  in 
drawing,  and  had  an  innate  feeling  for  beauty  and  grace.     As  All- 


•V^^  jtv  •»' 


:^^.riy;.y!«i;.^-;=''a»f!»'i»»;t-...       -     .>i^  ■'^'    -,<r:.r*-^'»iL' 'rU'v.t.j>>  ■.  ..,''Vr.  -.. 


FIG.  24.  — ALLSrON:    SPANISH    GIRL,   METRUPULITAN    MUSEUM. 


ALLSTOX,    MALRONE,   AND    VANDERLYN  II3 

ston  said,  "  No  woman  ever  lost  any  beauty  from  liis  liand."  There 
is  a  sweetness  and  charmini;"  purity  of  exj^ression  about  liis  works, 
which  his  sound  draftsmanship  and  recognition  of  character  prevent 
from  falhng  into  insipidity,  the  pitfall  for  most  of  his  craft  who 
attain  facility.  Miniature  painting  was  an  important  branch  of  the 
profession  at  that  time,  and  practised  with  every  degree  of  skill. 
All  of  the  portrait  painters  at  times  turned  their  hand  to  it,  even 
men  like  Copley  and  Trumbull,  and  it  descended  through  all  the 
grades,  down  to  profile  drawing  machines  and  black  silhouettes. 
Charles  W.  Peale  painted  many  miniatures  and  rather  good  ones; 
his  brother,  James  Peale,  confined  himself  mainly  to  them,  as  did 
some  of  the  numerous  Peale  family  of  the  second  generation  — 
Raphael,  the  son  of  Charles  \V.,  and  Sarah  M.  and  Anna  Claypoole, 
daughters  of  James.  There  was  also  John  Ramage,  an  Irish  gentle- 
man, who  painted  miniatures  in  Boston,  moving  to  New  York  in 
1777,  and  flourishing  there  until  age  and  (Dunlap  hints)  dissipation 
diminished  his  skill.  Some  of  their  work  is  fairly  good.  That  of 
Charles  Fraser,  the  earlv  friend  of  Malbone,  is  still  better.  As 
already  stated  he  accumulated  a  modest  competence  at  the  law  be- 
fore devoting  himself  entirely  to  art,  and  lived  in  comparative  comfort 
and  dignity,  painting  countless  portraits  in  little  of  the  distinguished 
Southern  families,  and  many  landscapes  and  compositions.  He  died 
in  i860,  at  the  age  of  seventy-eight,  still  regretting  the  years  that  he 
had  sacrificed  to  the  law.  There  was  also  Benjamin  Trott,  who 
studied  under  Stuart  and  Robert  Field,  of  whom  he  is  said  to  have 
been  jealous,  and  a  multitude  more  ;  but  none  equals  Malbone,  who 
stands,  by  general  consent,  without  American  rivals  until  compara- 
tively recent  times. 

Allston  remained  in  London  for  a  couple  of  years  after  Malbone 
left  him,  until  in  the  summer  of  1803  Vanderlyn  came  on  from 
Paris  for  a  few  months,  and  the  two  returned  there  together.  John 
\'anderlyn  was  then  on  his  second  trip  to  Europe.  He  was  born  in 
1776  of  Dutch  stock,  at  Kingston  on  the  Hudson,  which  town  was 
burned  the  next  year  by  the  British,  Vanderlyn's  family  being 
among  the  principal  sufferers.  He  got  a  fair  education  at  the  King- 
ston Academy,  and  when  sixteen  entered  the  employ  of  Thomas 
Barton,  an  Englishman,  who  was  the  chief  importer  of  engravings  in 
I 


114  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

New  York.  He  encouraged  the  boy's  tendencies  toward  painting, 
and  Archibald  Robertson,  a  Scotchman,  who  came  to  the  country 
in  I  791,  gave  him  some  instruction  and  employed  him  to  copy  sev- 
eral of  Stuart's  portraits,  including  one  of  Aaron  Hurr.  Vanderlyn 
acquitted  himself  so  well  that  Burr  was  interested,  sent  for  him,  and 
took  him  under  his  protection.  This  is  related  with  abundant  detail 
by  Dunlap.  Tuckerman's  account  is  that  Vanderlyn  was  employed 
ir.  a  blacksmith's  shop  near  Kingston,  and  that  Burr,  his  horse  hav- 
ing cast  a  shoe,  stopped  there  to  have  it  replaced.  He  saw  some 
charcoal  sketches  on  a  door,  found  that  Vanderlyn  was  the  artist, 
and  told  him  if  he  should  decide  to  practise  art,  to  "  Put  a  clean 
shirt  in  your  pocket,  come  to  New  York,  and  call  on  me."  A  few 
weeks  later,  as  Burr  was  at  breakfast,  a  brown  paper  parcel  was 
handed  to  him,  containing  a  coarse  shirt,  and  he  found  Vanderlyn  at 
his  door  and  received  him  into  his  family.  ' 

This  story  is  more  picturesque  than  Dunlap's,  and  therefore  more 
likely  to  be  widely  received,  but  it  is  almost  certainly  false.  In  any 
case,  however,  Burr  aided  Vanderlyn.  He  sent  him  to  Philadelphia 
for  eight  or  nine  months  to  study  under  Stuart,  and  on  his  return 
employed  him  to  paint  his  portrait  and  that  of  his  daughter,  Theo- 
dosia,  and  later  supplied  him  with  means  for  a  five  years'  stay  in 
Paris.  In  1801  he  returned  wn'th  copies  and  studies  made  abroad 
and  again  painted  a  portrait  of  his  patron  and  his  daughter.  He 
painted  some  other  portraits  and  two  views  of  Niagara,  which  were 
subsequently  engraved,  and  sailed  again  for  France  early  in  1803, 
crossing  from  there  to  England,  where  he  first  met  Allston,  and,  as 
has  been  said,  returned  with  him  to  Paris.  There  Allston  stayed 
only  long  enough  to  see  the  city  and  the  wonderful  collection  of 
pictures  in  the  Louvre,  the  spoils  of  the  French  arms  from  all 
Europe,  and  then  proceeded  through  Switzerland  to  Italy,  admiring 
the  scenery,  visiting  the  more  important  cities,  staying  at  Siena  to 
learn  the  language,  and  finally  arriving  at  Rome,  in  1804,  where 
Vanderlyn  joined  him  the  next  year. 

They  could  hardly  have  chosen  a  time  when  there  was  a  more 
brilliant  assemblage  of  foreigners  in  the  city.  It  was  a  foreigners' 
city.  Italian  art  was  exhausted.  The  great  traditions  handed 
down  through  working  artists  had  died  out.     Tiepolo,  the  last  who 


ALLSTON,   MALBONE,  AND   VANDERLYN  I  17 

had  inherited  a  breath  of  the  old  divine  afflatus,  died  in  1770,  and 
even  the  holders  of  the  empty  training  had  ceased.  Pomj^eo  Ikit- 
toni  and  the  men  wliom  West  met  were  no  more,  and  their  place 
was  filled  with  strangers  —  not  coming  like  Mengs  to  learn  of  their 
Italian  contemporaries,  but  enthusiasts  for  the  old  work,  striving  to 
go  back  and  take  it  up  again  ancw^  where  some  favorite  master 
had  left  it  in  the  sixteenth  or  seventeenth  century,  or  inspiring 
themselves  by  tlie  memories  and  visions  that  hung  about  the 
ancient  mistress  of  the  world.  Cornelius  was  there  and  his  group 
of  ascetics,  believing  with  true  German  thoroughness  that  they  had 
only  to  put  themselves  into  what  they  supposed  was  the  fifteenth- 
century  frame  of  mind  to  produce  fifteenth-century  pictures,  and 
Thorwaldsen  mingling  Canova  and  archaic  Greek  sculpture  with  an 
infusion  of  genius.  The  English  sculptors,  Gibson  and  Flaxman, 
were  there,  too;  with  Turner  and  the  poetic  triumvirate  of  Shelley, 
Keats,  and  Byron. 

The  surroundings  were  an  intellectual  intoxication  to  Allston, 
and  when,  the  next  year,  Coleridge  came  to  Rome,  he  had  some  one 
to  appreciate  and  share  his  enthusiasm.  He  and  Vanderlyn  were 
still  but  students,  working  evenings  from  the  model  in  the  Academy 
and  painting  occasional  pictures,  but  rapidly  advancing.  They  plotted 
together  to  start  some  question  of  art  or  literature  on  Coleridge's 
visits,  and  he  would  for  hours  pour  forth  as  wonderful  talk  as  ever 
issued  from  the  lips  of  man.  He  was  then  at  the  height  of  his 
powers,  not  yet  a  victim  of  opium,  and  even  Allston  could  not 
equal  him ;  but  they  were  congenial  spirits,  and  the  artist  added 
another  to  his  intimate,  enduring  friendships.  Coleridge  declared 
in  one  of  his  letters  that,  with  the  exception  of  the  Wordsworths, 
there  was  no  one  to  whom  he  felt  himself  so  strongly  drawn. 

Washington  Irving,  who  came  to  Rome  at  the  same  time  as 
Coleridge,  and  who  had  already  met  Vanderlyn  in  Paris  the  pre- 
ceding year,  was  a  younger  man  than  Allston  and  fairly  dazz/ed 
by  his  charm.  He  even  thought  seriously  of  deserting  literature 
for  art,  for  no  reason  save  the  prospect  of  living  in  community  with 
Allston.  He  saw  the  absurdity  of  such  a  scheme,  but  he  relinquished 
it  with  regret.  Allston  produced  no  important  works  in  Rome, 
though  one  may  suspect  his  influence  in  the  "  Marius  "  of  Vander- 


ii8 


HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 


lyn,  painted  in  1S07:  not  in  tlie  handling  or  technical  side  of  the 
painting,  for  \"anderlyn  was  older  and  with  more  practical  experi- 
ence than  he,  but  in  the  concepti  of  the  subject. 

The  next  year  Vanderlyn  took  his  "  Marius  "  to  Paris  with  him 
and  exhibited  it  at  the  Salon,  where  it  received  a  gold  medal,  being 
specially  designated  by  the  Emperor  himself,  whose  eye  was  caught 
by  the  picture   as   he  was   conducted   through   the   exhibition,  and 


Fiu.  26.  —  Vanderlyn:   Ariadne,  Pennsylvania  Academy. 


who  abruptly  ordered,  "  Give  the  medal  to  that."  To  be  sure,  the 
Emperor  knew  nothing  about  art,  but  his  taste  was  the  taste 
of  the  day.  The  picture  was  generally  admired,  and  Vanderlyn 
remained  seven  years  in  Paris,  esteemed  and  comparatively  pros- 
perous. In  1S12  he  exhibited  his  '' Ariadne,"  which  increased  his 
re])utation,  and  three  years  later  sailed  for  New  York  ;  but  before 
this  time  he  was  enabled  to  repay  in  some  measure  the  early  kind- 
ness of  Burr.  When  the  latter,  ruined  in  fortune  and  honor,  fled 
to  Paris,  Vanderlyn  received  him  as  a  friend  and  aided  him  to  the 


ALLSTON,    MALBONE,  AND   VANDERLYN  1 19 

extent  of  his  powers,  being  in  fact  his  only  support  during  the  first 
years  of  his  disgrace. 

At  the  time  of  Vanderlyn's  stay  in  Paris,  American  artists  had 
some  reputation  there,  enough  at  any  rate  to  cause  David  to  ask 
why  the  best  EngHsh  painters  were  all  Americans.  This  was  owing 
to  the  visits  of  men  like  West  and  Stuart  and  Trumbull,  and  also 
perhaps  of  Rembrandt  Peale,  who  reports  the  remark.  The  latter 
had  been  a  short  time  in  West's  studio  while  Allston  and  Malbone 
were  there,  and  he  made  two  trips  from  America  to  Paris  during 
Vanderlyn's  residence  in  the  city.  He  painted  portraits  of  the  dis- 
tinguished men  for  his  father's  museum,  and  discussed  with  them 
science,  philosophy,  and  the  bones  of  the  mastodon  which  his  father 
had  discovered.  He  was  successful  enough  to  have  Denon,  wdio 
was  Director  General  of  the  Museums,  offer  him  government 
employment,  and  David,  who  had  refused  to  sit  for  any  other 
painter,  allowed  him  to  make  a  portrait,  and  pressed  him  to  remain, 
saying  that,  "  as  Gerard  had  commenced  history  and  could  paint  no 
more  portraits,  he  would  give  him  all  the  Imperial  portraits  to  paint," 
adding,  "  I  prefer  Gerard  to  you,  but  I  prefer  your  portraits  to  any 
others  here."  Rembrandt  Peale,  however,  was  too  restless  to  take 
advantage  of  these  offers  and  chose  rather  to  return  home,  there  to 
emulate  his  father  in  the  variety  of  his  occupations. 


CHAPTER   VII 

THE    LAST    PUPILS    OF   WEST 

Allston"s  Return  to  America  axd  Marriage. — Sails  again  for  England. — 
S.  F.  B.  Morse.  —  Charles  Robert  Leslie.  —  Allston's  Work  in  London. — 
Final  Return  to  America.  —  Leslie's  Work.  —  Gilbert  Stuart  Newton. — 
Mather  Brown.  —  Rembrandt  Peale''s  Later  Life.  —  Morse's  Work  in  America. 

—  Vanderlyn"s    Life.  —  Allston's    Life    in    America.  —  "  Belshazzar's   Feast." 

—  Allston's  Position  in  America 

Ix  1809,  a  year  or  so  before  Peale's  return,  Allston,  who  on 
Vanderlyn's  departure  from  Rome  had  moved  to  Leghorn  and  from 
there  to  London,  sailed  for  Boston.  The  determining  motive  for 
this  was  his  engagement  to  Miss  Channing,  formed  while  he  was 
still  an  undergraduate  in  Harvard  and  which  had  lasted  now  eleven 
years  with  more  fidelity  and  sentiment  than  passion.  He  stayed  in 
America  a  couple  of  years,  visited  his  mother  in  South  Carolina 
and  painted  her  portrait,  also  one  of  Dr.  Channing  and  some  small 
canvases.  He  delivered  the  poem  before  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa 
Society  at  Harvard  in  iSii,  and  the  same  year  returned  to  London 
with  his  wife  and  with  S.  F.  B.  Morse,  who  had  joined  himself 
to  them,  and  who  looked  up  to  Allston  with  the  reverence  and 
enthusiasm  that  he  invariably  inspired  in  young  men,  in  spite  of 
their  utter  difference  of  temperament  and  upbringing.  For  Morse 
was  of  the  sternest  Puritan  stock,  son  of  the  Rev.  Dr.  Jedidiah 
Morse,  an  unshaken  pillar  of  the  faith,  and  had  been  reared  in  all 
the  strenuousncss  of  a  Puritan  household.  He  had  a  brother  who 
found  leisure  to  read  the  Bible  through  twice,  knew  long  portions 
of  it  by  heart,  and  who  frequently  conducted  family  worship  before 
he  died  at  the  age  of  three  years  and  ten  months.  This  sounds  like 
cruelty  but  it  was  not  so  to  the  infant  of  a  century  ago,  who  fre- 
cpicnlly  took  a  fearful  joy  in  such  accomplishments.  Under  the 
rigid  forms  of  the  Morse  family  there  was  affection,  intelligence, 
and  more  liberality  than  would  be  supposed. 


MORSE:    PORTRAIT   OF   MRS.   DE    FOREST,    YALE    SClIUOl.   OF    FINE    ARTS. 


CHAPTER    VII 

THE   LAST   PUI' 

;n    to    Ameb'  for    E:' 

1  .  B.  Morse.  —  Charles    i- 

<\L    Return  to    America.       ...  ^.\.  .>;.,. 

iHEK  Brown.  —  Rembrandt  Pea  America 

—  V''AN'PERLYN''S      T  ^iN'S      LIFI-,      IN      AAiEKICA.  — ••  iJ>EhbH.\ 

—  AT.r'^TON'':  Po'  <A 

Vanrli  -1   iVs  departure  from  Rornr  li.id  mo   _^        -.-_;horn  and  1 
th  ^.ondon,  sailed  for  P.  The  determining  motive 

th  engagement  to  Miss  Channing,  formed  while  he  wa: 

stiil  an  undergraduate  in  Harvard  and  which  had  lasted  no\ 
years  with  more  fidelity  and  sentiment  than  passion.     He  stayed  ir 
America; -a  couple  o'    -  visited  his  mother  in  South  Cafolin; 

and  painted  her  port!  - o  one  of  Dr.  Channinp  nnrl  somr-  smnl 

canvases.     He    delivered    the    poem    before   the 
Society  at  Harvard  in  i8ii,  and  the  same  year  returned 
with  his  wife  and  with  S.  F.  B.  Morse,  who   had    joii 
to    them,  and  who   looked    up  to   Allston  with  the  reverence  anc 
enthusiasm  that  he  invariably  inspired  in  young  men,  in   spite,  oi 
their  utter  difference  of  temperament  and  upbringing.     For  Mors< 
was    of    the   sternest  Puritan  stock,  son  of   the   Rev.   Dr.  Jedidial 
Morse,  an  unshaken  pillar  of  the  faith,  and  had  d  in  ali 

the  strenuousness  of  a  Puritai  rother  who 

found  leisure  to  read  the   T  gh  twice,  ■  ig  portion- 

of  it  by  heart,  an  '  -  '-     '•  uuducted  fanm)   \v(;i.-,hip  before 

he  died  at  the  jage       .  1  ten  months.     This  sounds  lik< 

cruelty  but  it  was  no^  ^o  t  ifant  of  a  century  ago,  who  fre- 

quently took  a  feari  :i  accomplishments.      Under   the 

i^l^fi  ?(^'fti?o,.^o^:p,^8>^^.^e.Tfe^i5*!G>>ty'atiica-aivi\v«$  -prfoAv^^i...  S^^ljgcnce 
and  more  liberalitx  than  would  be  supposed. 


THE    LAST    PUPILS   OF   WEST  l>l 

Samuel  Finlcy  Brecsc  Morse,  born  in  1791,  was  the  oldest  of 
three  sons,  who  lived  beyond  infancy,  and  he  showed  the  usual 
early  symptoms  which  proclaim  the  future  painter.  The  profession 
naturally  did  not  seem  a  desirable  one  to  his  parents,  but  he  was 
permitted  to  practise  it  as  well  as  he  could  even  during  his  college 
course  at  Yale,  where  he  painted  a  family  group  which  is  still  pre- 
served. Shortly  before  his  graduation  in  the  class  of  18 10  he  met 
Allston  and  wrote  to  his  faniily,  choosing  art  as  a  profession,  and 
saying  that  when  Allston  returned  to  England  in  the  spring  he 
"should  admire  to  be  able  to  go  with  him."  His  family  yielded  and 
he  went  to  London,  whither  six  months  later  came  Leslie  and  joined 
him  in  his  pursuit  of  art  and  admiration  of  Allston. 

Charles  Robert  Leslie  was  born  of  American  parents  in  London, 
in  1794,  and  so  was  some  three  years  Morse's  junior.  When  a  boy 
of  six  his  family  moved  to  Philadelphia  and  there  he  was  brought 
up ;  sketching  everywhere,  practising  drawing,  but  especially  haunt- 
ing the  theatre,  making  friends  with  the  actors,  painting  scenery  and 
portraits.  Some  of  his  w^ater-color  portraits  of  actors  in  costume  are 
still  preserved  and  are  remarkable  for  a  boy  of  sixteen.  They  are 
drawn  in  pencil,  their  firmness  and  accuracy  of  outline  showing  no 
signs  of  the  beginner,  and  tinted  with  washes  of  thin  color  allowing 
the  lines  below  to  be  seen.  They  may  have  been  suggested  by  some 
of  the  colored  prints  of  Rowlandson  or  his  contemporaries,  but  they 
have  a  grace  and  sincerity  all  their  own.  It  was  with  works  like  these 
that  he  accumulated  enough  for  his  trip  abroad  and  for  the  "  cheer- 
ful, innocent,  scrambling  student  life,"  as  he  called  it.  Leslie's 
character  was  peculiarly  sunny,  modest,  and  pure.  He  soon  took 
rooms  with  Morse  and  visited  West,  now  growing  old  and  out 
of  royal  favor,  but  still  valiantly  at  work  on  huge  canvases  and 
unwearied  in  kindly  aid  to  students.  Copley,  too,  advised  his  voung 
compatriots ;  but  it  was  to  Allston  that  they  turned  with  the  deepest 
reverence  and  who  awakened  their  highest  enthusiasm. 

hi  order  that  there  mio-ht  be  no  mistake  about  his  alles^iance, 
Morse  wrote  home  in  181 3,  "You  must  recollect  when  you  tell 
friends  that  I  am  studying  in  England  that  I  am  a  pupil  of  Mr. 
Allston  and  not  Mr.  West."  This  is  not  derogatory  of  West,  whom 
both  Morse  and  Leslie  admired,  but  is   Morse's  personal   tribute  of 


122  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

adoration  to  Allston,  who  was  at  the  time  of  his  second  visit  to 
England  at  his  cuhiiinating  point.  He  was  happy  in  his  wedded 
life,  beloved  with  a  peculiar  intensity  of  affection  by  the  choicest 
spirits  of  the  time,  with  the  future  bright  before  him,  and  producing 
works  which  won  him  much  admiration  and  some  money.  He 
painted  a  great  picture,  eleven  feet  wide  by  thirteen  high,  "  The 
Dead  Man  restored  to  Life  by  touching  the  Bones  of  the  Prophet 
Elisha,"  now  in  the  Pennsylvania  Academy  and  which,  exhibited  in 
the  British  Institution,  gained  a  prize  of  two  hundred  guineas.  He 
painted  "  The  Angel  releasing  Saint  Peter  from  Prison  "  for  Sir 
George  Beaumont,  a  portrait  of  Coleridge  now  in  the  National 
Portrait  Gallery  in  London,  the  "  Cavern  Scene  from  Gil  Bias," 
"  Uriel  in  the  Sun,"  which  brought  him  a  gratuity  of  one  hundred 
and  fifty  guineas  from  the  British  histitution,  and  a  "  Jacob  s  Dream," 
bought  by  Lord  Egremont.  And  then  after  a  seven  years'  stay,  just 
when  his  position  seemed  to  be  assured  and  a  future  like  that  of 
West  open  before  him,  he  returned  to  America  and  remained  there 
the  rest  of  his  life. 

It  is  difficult  to  know  why  he  did  so.  There  are  reasons  in 
plenty,  but  they  do  not  seem  sufficient.  He  had  been  seriously 
sick  in  1S13  from  overwork  on  his  "Dead  Man  restored  to  Life," 
so  that  his  constitution  was  probably  weakened,  and  when,  two 
years  later,  his  wafe  died,  he  felt  her  loss  with  all  the  sensitiveness 
of  his  nature;  but  instead  of  unnerving  him,  he  found  in  work  a 
refuge  from  his  sorrow.  His  income,  too,  was  less  than  convenient, 
and  he  had  made  his  arrangements  to  return  before  the  appearance 
of  the  Earl  of  Egremont  as  a  patron ;  yet  making  allowance  for  all, 
it  is  not  clear  why  he  should  have  been  disheartened,  or  why,  if 
disheartened,  he  should  have  thought  the  future  promised  more  in 
America  than  in  England.  He  spoke  himself  in  later  years  of  "a 
homesickness,  which  (in  spite  of  the  best  and  kindest  friends  and 
every  encouragement  as  an  artist)  brought  me  back  to  my  own 
country,"  but  it  is  probable  that  there  was  also  a  general  feeling 
at  the  time  that  America  offered  great  opportunities  to  an  artist. 
The  new  republic  had  increased  rapidly  in  wealth,  population,  and 
territory.  The  War  of  181 2  had  proved  that  its  independence  from 
Europe  was  real ;  and  the  collapse  of  Burr's  ill-fated  Louisiana  expe- 


THE    LAST    PUPILS   OF   WLST  1 23 

dition  that  its  government  was  stable.  Far-sighted  men  already 
saw  its  enormous  future  power.  The  advance  in  the  arts  had  been 
rapid,  American  j)ainters  were  honored  abroad,  and  it  was  natural 
to  anticipate  a  great  artistic  movement  —  something  like  that  which 
had  just  taken  place  in  England.  Why  this  failed,  why  the  very 
force  of  the  material  growth  choked  the  intellectual,  will  be  related 
more  at  length  in  the  coming  chapters,  but  it  is  mentioned  here  to 


Fig.  27.  —  Leslie:  Sancho  Lanza  and  the  Duchess,  National  Galleky,  London. 

explain  the  return  of  so  many  promising  men  and  the  almost  com- 
plete failure  of  their  subsequent  productions. 

The  fault  was  not  in  the  men,  but  in  their  environment.  Leslie 
remained  in  England,  save  for  one  flying  trip  to  America,  lured  by 
the  offer  of  the  position  of  Professor  of  Fine  Arts  at  West  Point, 
the  utter  impossibility  of  which  position  he  had  the  good  sense  to 
recoQ-nize  at  once  and  to  resign  it  and  return  to  his  accustomed 
work.     He  is  consequently  to  be  counted  as  of  the  British  school 


124 


HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 


rather  than  the  American,  and  ranks  high  among  his  contemporaries. 
His  paintings  in  the  unheroic  line  of  anecdotic  gcni^c  —  with  sub- 
jects from  Shakespeare's  comecHes  or  Don  Quixote  or  the  Spectator 
—  are  filled  with  a  love  of  the  sweet,  wholesome  thino;s  of  life,  and 
that  delight  in  all  the  old  pictiiresqueness,  which  is  doubly  keen  after 
the  deprivation  from  it  in  a  new  country,  and  which  gives  the  charm 
to  Irving's  Braccdridge  Hall  dind  Old  Christmas. 

Even  those  who  are  not  inclined  to  admire  pictures  that  are  only 
illustrations  of  literature  are  forced  to  make  a  reservation  in  favor  of 
Leslie's.  They  are  well  painted,  with  a  sure  and  brilliant  touch,  the 
faces  are  animated  and  characteristic,  without  being  forced  into 
caricature,  the  grouping,  the  costumes,  the  whole  mise  en  scene  is 
charming  and  shows  how  he  profited  by  his  boyish  familiarity  with 
the  theatres  and  actors  of  Philadelphia.  His  color,  too,  is  personal 
with  a  milky  whiteness  in  the  lights  and  a  velvety  shadow  quite 
unlike  the  warm  tones  generally  popular  at  the  time  and  agreeing 
perfectly  with  the  story  that  he  once  at  a  brilliant  dinner  party  sat 
silent  through  the  whole  talk,  twiddling  a  silver  spoon  and  watch- 
ing the  reflections  on  it.  Leslie  lived  long  in  England,  successful, 
honored,  and  loved,  and  died  there  in  1859.  The  painter  George  D. 
Leslie  is  his  son. 

Almost  equally  promising  was  the  career  of  Gilbert  Stuart 
Newton,  a  nephew  of  Gilbert  Stuart,  whose  father's  royalist  sympa- 
thies caused  him  to  move  to  Nova  Scotia,  where  the  boy  was  born  in 
1795.  He  soon  came  to  Boston,  where  he  studied  painting  with  his 
uncle  until  puffed  up  with  youthful  pride  he  cried  out  at  him  one  day, 
"  Now,  old  gentleman,  I'll  show  you  how  to  paint,"  which  so  enraged 
Stuart  that,  not  happening  to  have  the  gout  at  the  time,  he  kicked 
his  nephew  out  of  the  studio.  Newton  did  not  come  back,  but  went 
to  London  and  flourished.  His  best  works  are  small  genre  pieces, 
much  in  Leslie's  style,  but  looser  in  handling,  warmer  in  tone,  with 
a  sentiment  less  frank  and  simple,  and  more  in  sympathy  with  the 
public  of  the  Books  of  Beauty  which  flourished  then. 

Besides  these  men  there  was  Mather  Brown,  a  Bostonian,  who 
went  early  to  London  and  remained  there.  He  was  a  pupil  of  West's, 
who  attained  to  lesser  fame,  but  was  yet  appointed  portrait  painter 
to  H.R.H.  the   Duke  of  York,  and  is  represented  by  a  number  of 


THE    LAST    IT'I'ILS   OF   WEST  125 

canvases  in  the  National  Portrait  Galler)^  thougli  Leslie  describes  his 
studio  in  later  years  as  lined  with  wretched  canvases  two  or  three  deep 
against  the  walls.  Probably  others  still  more  completely  forgotten 
remained  to  seek  fame  abroad,  but  soon  after  the  close  of  the  War  of 
18 1 2  there  w^as  a  general  return  to  America  of  her  painters  who  had 
won  their  first  laurels.  The  older  men  who  had  returned  twenty 
years  or  more  before,  like  Peale  or  Stuart,  without  increasing  their 
fame,  had  not  done  so  badly,  and  now  that  they  were  growing  old 
there  seemed  a  chance  for  the  younger  men.  A  number  of  them 
preceded  AUston.  Rembrandt  Peale  returned  in  1810  or  181 1, 
Vandcrlyn  and  Morse  in  18 15,  Trumbull  in  1816,  and  Allston  two 
years  later.  Peale  had  much  of  his  father's  versatility  and  energy, 
and  followed  his  career  pretty  closely.  He  brought  back  with 
liim  his  picture  of  the  "  Roman  Daughter,"  which  he  exhibited  at 
the  Pennsylvania  Academy  in  181 2;  then  finding  that  his  services 
were  not  in  demand,  he  moved  to  Baltimore,  and,  after  the  paternal 
example,  established  a  museum  and  gallery  of  paintings  which  he 
conducted  for  nine  years.  At  the  end  of  that  time  he  produced 
"  The  Court  of  Death "  and  exhibited  it  throughout  the  country 
to  his  great  profit,  gaining  nearly  $9000  in  a  single  year.  It  was 
a  huge  canvas,  not  badly  done,  \vith  the  king  of  terrors 
seated  in  the  centre,  and  a  line  of  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men 
approaching  him  from  either  side  —  an  allegory  very  simple  and 
intelligible  and  well  calculated  to  the  moral  taste  of  the  day.  Its 
popularity  was  enduring,  and  it  continued  to  be  shown  from 
time  to  time  until  it  found  a  final  resting  place  in  the  Detroit 
Art  Gallery. 

After  this  Peale  took  up  portrait  painting  more  vigorously,  visit- 
ing New  York,  Boston,  and  Philadelphia.  He  produced  a  likeness 
of  Washington  from  memory,  which  he  succeeded  in  having  bought 
by  Congress.  He  went  abroad  again  for  short  visits,  he  continued 
to  paint,  introduced  illuminating  gas  into  Baltimore,  wrote  memoirs 
and  many  reminiscences  of  the  men  with  whom  he  had  come  in 
contact,  and  became  in  his  old  age  a  sort  of  dean  of  the  profession, 
being  for  many  years  the  only  surviving  artist  who  had  painted 
Washington  from  life.  He  died  in  i860.  He  was  an  accurate 
painter  and  (probably  on  account  of  his  work  in  Paris)  better  trained 


126  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

in  drawing  than  most  at  the  time,  but  his  color  was  dull,  his  painting 
lacked  light  and  was  decidedly  inferior  to  his  father's. 

Much  the  same  type  of  artist  as  Peale  with  the  same  energy, 
enterprise,  and  mechanical  ingenuity  was  S.  F.  B.  Morse,  who  reached 
New  York  some  four  years  later.  He  had  been  oblis^ed  to  return 
from  lack  of  funds,  and  his  struggle  against  adverse  circumstances 
was  severe,  although  his  success  as  a  student  had  been  rapid  and 
remarkable.  He  exhibited  in  the  Royal  Academy  of  1813  a  painting 
of  a  "Dying  Hercules,"  which  had  already  won  him  honors  in  another 
form.  Following  the  example  of  Allston,  he  had  modelled  in  plaster 
first  the  torso  and  then,  encouraged  by  his  success,  the  whole  figure. 
West  praised  it  and  finding  that  there  was  a  competition  for  a 
single  figure,  he  sent  it  to  the  Adelphi  Society  of  Arts  and  was 
rewarded  by  gaining  the  gold  medal  which  was  presented  to  him 
with  much  ceremony.  Many  years  later  this  figure  reappeared  with 
dramatic  effect  after  all  copies  of  it  had  been  apparently  lost  or 
destroyed.  \Mien  he  had  finally  succeeded  with  the  problem  of 
telegraphy,  and  had  been  commissioned  to  set  up  his  instruments  in 
the  Capitol  at  Washington,  it  was  necessary  to  place  batteries  and 
wires  in  the  basement  of  the  building,  and  there  groping  around 
in  the  long-disused  vaults  he  saw  a  strangely  familiar  object  and 
recognized  with  amazement  a  cast  of  his  "  Hercules."  It  was  as  if 
this  witness  of  his  early  success  had  appeared  to  congratulate  him  in 
the  crowning  moment  of  his  life.  The  presence  of  the  statue  was 
explained  later.  Of  the  six  casts  originally  made,  he  had  given  one 
to  Bullfinch  the  architect,  who  had  stored  it  in  the  Capitol,  and  after 
his  death  it  had  been  forgotten.     But  the  coincidence  was  striking. 

Morse  found  small  demand  for  his  painting  at  first  and  went  from 
city  to  city  trying  to  find  patrons  for  ]X)rtraits  at  the  modest  price 
of  fifteen  dollars  a  head.  He  was  most  successful  in  Charleston, 
where  in  18 18  he  painted  fifty-three  portraits  in  five  months, 
returning  afterward  for  a  number  of  winters.  He  brought  many  of 
the  heads  north  with  him  in  tlie  summer  and  there  filled  in  costumes 
and  backgrounds.  He  painted  groups  and  figure  compositions,  and 
in  1823  exhibited  an  interior  of  the  House  of  Representatives  filled 
with  diminutive  portraits  of  the  members,  but  for  some  reason  the 
picture,  which  had  cost  him  two  years  of  hard  work  and  which  he 


FIG.  28.  — NEWTOX:  YORKK    AND   THE   GRISETTP:,  NATIONAL    CAI.I.KRV,  LONDON, 


THE    LAST    PUPILS   OF   WEST 


I  29 


had  liopcd  to  cxliibit  with  j^rofit,  did  not  succeed  with  the  pubhc  and 
was  rolled  up  and  put  away  as  a  failure.  He  also  devoted  himself 
more  and  more  to  mechanical  inventions,  for  whicli  he  liad  always 
had  a  gift,  and  with  his  brother  introduced  a  pulsating  pump 
from  which  they  received  some  profit.  These  alternated  with  his 
painting  according  to  his  necessities  and  the  promise  of  gain,  but 
the  turning  point  in  his  life  came  later,  in  1832,  as  he  w-as  returning 
from  a  trip  to  England.  The  conversation  in  the  cabin  of  the  ship 
turned  one  evening  on  electricity.  Morse  knew  little  about  it  except 
what  he  had  learned  from  a  few  lectures  heard  at  Yale,  though  to 
those  he  had  listened  with  particular  interest.  The  question  was 
asked  as  to  the  length  of  time  necessary  for  the  current  to  pass 
through  a  w^ire,  and  when  it  was  declared  that  the  transit  was  instan- 
taneous, Morse  remarked,  "  If  the  transit  of  electricity  can  be  made 
visible  in  any  part  of  the  circuit,  I  see  no  reason  w^hy  intelligence 
may  not  be  transmitted  instantaneously  by  electricity."  The  com- 
pany broke  up,  but  Morse  went  on  deck  with  his  mind  full  of  the 
idea  and  jotted  down  in  a  note-book  the  first  skeleton  of  the  "  Morse 
alphabet,"  and  from  that  time  painting  ceased  to  be  foremost  in  his 
thoughts. 

It  was  a  serious  loss,  for  Morse,  without  being  a  genius,  was  yet 
perhaps  better  calculated  than  another  to  give  in  pictures  the  spirit 
of  the  difficult  times  from  1830  to  i860.  He  was  a  man  sound  in 
mind  and  body,  well  born,  well  educated,  and  both  by  birth  and  edu- 
cation in  sympathy  with  his  time.  He  had  been  abroad,  had  seen 
good  work,  and  received  sound  training.  His  ideals  were  not  too  far 
ahead  of  his  public.  Working  as  he  did  under  widely  varying  con- 
ditions, his  paintings  are  dissimilar  not  only  in  merit  but  in  method 
of  execution  ;  even  his  portraits  vary  from  thin,  free  handling  to  solid 
impasto.  Yet  in  the  best  of  them  there  is  a  real  painter's  feeling  for 
his  material,  the  heads  have  a  soundness  of  construction  and  a  fresh- 
ness in  the  carnations  that  recall  Raeburn  rather  than  West ;  the 
poses  are  graceful  or  interesting,  the  costumes  are  skilfully  arranged, 
and  in  addition  he  understands  perfectly  the  character  of  his  sitters, 
the  men  and  women  of  the  transition  period,  shrewd,  capable,  but 
rather  commonplace,  w^ithout  the  ponderous  dignity  of  Copley's 
subjects  or  the  cosmopolitan  graces  of  a  later  day. 


130  HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

The  struggles  incident  to  the  invention  and  development  of 
telegraphy  turned  Morse  from  the  practice  of  art ;  but  up  to  the  end 
of  his  life  he  was  interested  in  it  and  aggressive  in  any  scheme  for 
its  advancement.  His  intiuence  in  founding  the  National  Academy 
of  Design  will  be  spoken  of  later,  but  his  purchase  and  presentation 
to  Yale  College  of  the  "  Prophet  Jeremiah  dictating  to  the  Scribe 
Baruch,"  by  his  friend  and  master,  Allston,  may  be  mentioned  here 
as  one  example  from  many  of  the  use  made  of  the  wealth  which 
finally  came  to  him. 

To  Allston  himself,  to  Vanderlyn  who  returned  in  the  same  year  as 
IMorse,  to  Trumbull  who  came  the  next  year  (18 16),  fate  was  less  kind. 
Between  Vanderlyn  and  Trumbull  an  animosity  arose  almost  at  once, 
originated  probably  by  the  award  of  the  decorations  in  the  Rotunda  of 
the  Capitol  to  Trumbull,  but  strengthened  and  elaborated  by  many 
petty  acts  of  mutual  dislike.  Trumbull  undoubtedly  had  much  more 
political  "influence"  in  the  special  sense  of  the  word  than  Vanderlyn 
and  knew  how  to  employ  it,  but  in  all  fairness  the  commission  was 
due  to  him  on  his  apparent  merits.  His  reputation  was  well  estab- 
lished, he  had  painted  historical  compositions  of  great  merit,  and  he 
had  an  invaluable  collection  of  portraits  painted  from  life  of  the 
principal  actors  in  the  struggle  for  independence.  Vanderlyn  felt 
himself  the  better  painter,  and  said  so.  It  was  true  enough,  for  he 
had  had  a  sound  training  in  France  and  was  at  the  height  of  his 
powers,  while  Trumbull's  skill  was  on  the  decline,  but  that  could  not 
be  known  at  the  time.  The  older  man  triumphed,  and  there  was 
much  ill-feeling  which  Trumbull  seems  to  have  manifested  indirectly 
in  various  petty  ways.  Vanderlyn  secured  rooms  in  the  New  York 
city  almshouse  to  exhil^it  his  "  Marius,"  "  Ariadne,"  and  other  works, 
but  during  an  absence  from  town  the  permission  was  revoked,  he 
was  ordered  to  remove  his  canvases,  and  Vanderlyn  saw  therein  the 
spite  of  Trumbull.  Later  he  embarked  on  the  exhibition  of  pano- 
ramas and  obtained  a  permit  to  erect  a  building  for  that  purpose  in 
City  Hall  Park,  and  there  showed  views  of  Paris,  Athens,  Mexico, 
Versailles  (painted  by  himself),  Geneva,  and  the  three  battles  of  Lodi, 
Waterloo,  and  that  at  the  gates  of  Paris,  The  enterprise  was  not 
very  successful ;  the  building  called  the  Rotunda  was  burdened  with 
a  debt,  and  finally,  owing  to  unpaid   obligations,  seized  by  the  city 


FIG.  29.  — MORSE:   LAFAYETTE,  CITY   HALL,  NEW  YORK. 


THE    LAST   PUPILS   OF   WEST  I  33 

without  remuneration  to  the  artist  and  used  for  various  purposes, 
being  at  one  time  the  seat  of  tlie  Court  of  Sessions  and  afterward 
of  the  Marine  Court. 

With  the  failure  of  these  schemes  Vanderlyn  became  discouraged, 
returned  to  Kingston,  led  a  life  of  obscurity,  and  was  frequently  in 
need  of  money.  Although  his  time  was  largely  occupied  by  his 
exhibitions  and  panoramas,  he  had  painted  a  number  of  portraits  and 
other  pictures  in  the  years  following  his  return,  but  he  was  a  laborious 
and  slow  executant,  sometimes  taking  sixty  sittings  for  a  j)ortrait,  so 
that  they  afforded  him  little  profit,  and  during  his  Kingston  residence 
he  seems  to  have  practically  ceased  work.  Finally,  in  1842,  toward 
the  end  of  his  life.  Congress  urged  by  his  friends  awarded  to  him  the 
commission  for  one  of  the  panels  in  the  Capitol.  The  subject  was 
the  "Landing  of  Columbus,"  and  the  price  $1200;  but  the  recog- 
nition came  too  late  to  Vanderlyn.  Long  inactivity  had  dimin- 
ished his  skill.  He  went  to  Paris  to  execute  the  work,  and  Bishop 
Kip,  his  biographer  and  friend,  who  saw  the  picture  in  1844, 
reports  that  "  it  was  advancing  under  the  hand  of  a  clever  French 
artist  whom  Vanderlyn  had  employed.  Of  course  the  conception 
and  design  were  his  owai,  but  I  believe  little  of  the  actual  work." 

This  is  fully  borne  out  by  the  canvas  itself,  which  shows  the 
ordinary  facile  Parisian  work  of  the  time,  but  no  trace  of  Vanderlyn  s 
own  manner,  which  was  of  an  earlier  date,  firmer,  more  serious,  more 
solid.  This  workmanship  as  shown  in  his  youthful  works  is  his  dis- 
tinguishing characteristic.  He  was  the  first  of  our  artists  to  study 
in  France  instead  of  England,  and  to  acquire  the  accurate  French 
draughtsmanship  then  enforced  by  David  and  his  school.  The 
"  Marius  "  is  decidedly  Davidian  in  conception.  The  "  Ariadne  "  is 
an  admirable  piece  of  solid  modelling,  an  academic  study  from  the 
life,  rather  devoid  of  charm,  the  legs  and  feet  being  especially  clumsy 
and  inelegant,  but  executed  with  a  faithfulness  and  capacity  unknown 
in  England.  Even  his  portraits,  though  the  })ortraits  of  that  time 
seem  now  all  executed  on  one  pattern,  have  a  certain  unidealized  actu- 
ality which  is  felt  when  they  are  compared  with  his  London-trained 
contemporaries,  and  also  a  firmer  modelling  and  a  solider,  more 
opaque  painting  as  compared  with  their  transparent  shadows  and 
backgrounds.      The    end  of  Vanderlyn's    life  w^as  unhappy,  passed 


134  HISTORY    01"    A.Ml.RICAX    PAIXTIXG 

partly  in  Washington,  where  he  painted  an  occasional  portrait,  and 
partly  at  Kingston.  He  was  convinced  of  his  own  ability  and  bitter 
against  a  woi'ld  which  would  not  recognize  or  emplo)-  it.  He  was 
sensitive,  he  was  poor,  and  he  was  distrusted  as  a  sensualist  from 
his  paintings  of  the  nude.  He  died  in  1852  in  absolute  want. 
•  His  former  companion,  Allston,  had  preceded  him  by  nearly  a 
dozen  years,  dying  in  1843.  Vanderlyn  was  in  Paris  at  the  time, 
working  on  his  panel  for  the  Capitol,  and  wrote,  "  When  I  look  back 
some  five  or  six  and  thirty  years  since,  when  we  were  both  in  Rome 
toeether,  and  next-door  neiuhbors  on  the  Trinita  del  Monte,  and  in 
the  spring  of  life,  full  of  enthusiasm  for  our  art,  and  fancying  fair 
prospects  awaiting  us  in  after  years,  it  is  painful  to  reflect  how  far 
these  hopes  have  been  from  being  realized."  This  is  true  enough  in 
a  way,  for  Allston  failed  more  signally  than  Vanderlyn  to  produce 
works  commensurate  with  his  early  promise,  but  his  latter  life  is  far 
from  being  so  painful  and  bitter  a  story.  It  is,  in  fact,  a  curious 
triumph  of  faith  over  works.  He  was  welcomed  to  Boston  and 
America  with  enthusiasm,  and  for  twenty-eight  years  held  here  an 
unchallenged  supremacy  as  the  head  of  American  art,  almost  as  the 
head  of  all  art.  The  personal  charm  of  his  youth  remained  undimin- 
ished in  age  and  attracted  to  him  the  choicest  spirits,  the  brightest 
talents,  the  purest  enthusiasts,  who  worshipped  at  his  shrine  with  a 
faith  that  knew  no  doubts;  while  for  the  great  mass  of  the  people 
he  was  a  mighty  unknown,  who  served  to  justify  the  claims  that 
America  was  supreme  in  painting  as  in  territory,  liberty,  and 
intelligence. 

And  this  reputation  was  maintained  in  spite  of  the  fact  (or  per- 
haps on  account  of  it)  that  there  were  hardly  any  works  produced  to 
justify  it.  lie  brought  back  with  him  from  London  the  unfinished 
canvas  of  "  IV-lshazzar's  Feast,"  and  that  mysterious  work  might 
have  served  as  the  original  for  Balzac's  Chef-d'oeuvre  Incouuu.  Its 
shadow^  hung  over  his  whole  life,  taken  up.  put  aside,  recommenced, 
altered,  arousing  the  highest  hopes  in  his  friends  and  the  w^ildest 
praises  from  the  ignorant.  It  hangs  to-day  a  battered  wreck  in  the 
Boston  Museum  of  Art,  still  unfinished,  dingy,  anticpiated,  showing 
to  the  casual  observer  no  particle  of  true  feeling  or  skill.  Pitiful 
wreck  as  it  is,  it  might  still  awaken  a  sort  of  resentment  in  the  friends 


THK    I. AST    PCI'lLS   OF    WEST  I  35 

of  Allston,  for  after  liis  temperament  and  surroundings  it  was  the 
most  potent  influence  in  paralyzing  all  his  efforts.  He  might  perhaps 
have  applied  himself  to  the  production  of  other  work  if  his  magmim 
opus  were  not  always  there  as  an  obstacle  and  excuse.  Immedi- 
ately after  his  return  he  settled  in  Boston  and  remained  there  until 
1830,  when  he  married  again  and  moved  to  Cambridgeport,  where  he 
had  a  large  studio  near  his  house.  His  second  wife  was  a  daughter 
of  Chief  Justice  Dana,  and  fortunately  had  sufficient  means  to 
remove  all  danger  of  crushing  poverty  from  his  later  years,  though 
he  often  needed  mone3%  for  Allston  had  more  than  a  poet's  igno- 
rance and  indifference  in  financial  matters.  He  was  not  extravagant, 
his  tastes  were  simple,  but  he  would  not  occupy  his  mind  with 
thoughts  about  money.  When  his  mother's  estate  was  settled,  he 
accepted  a  sum  much  below  the  value  of  his  share  in  order  to  have  it 
paid  at  once,  and  then  deposited  in  a  bank,  drawing  what  he  needed 
until  it  was  exhausted,  with  no  effort  to  invest  it  so  that  it  might 
earn  a  permanent  income.  There  is  no  record  that  he  despised 
or  hated  money  or  money  making.  It  simply  did  not  interest 
him.  His  ideas,  his  imaginations,  his  dreams,  were  too  precious  to 
be  curtailed  by  the  prosaic  worries  of  real  life,  or  rather  his  dreams 
were  his  real  life. 

During  his  later  years  he  still  painted.  "  The  Prophet  Jeremiah," 
"  Saul  and  the  Witch  of  Endor,"  "  Spalatro  s  Vision  of  the  Bloody 
Hand,"  and  in  a  softer  vein  "  Beatrice,"  "  Rosalie,"  "  The  Spanish  Girl," 
were  done  in  America,  yet  on  the  whole  he  produced  little.  He  him- 
self never  doubted  of  his  industry,  but  there  was  always  the  "  Bel- 
shazzar's  Feast "  to  serve  as  an  excuse  for  not  working  on  other 
things,  and  when  in  1836  he  was  offered  by  Congress  a  commission 
for  one  of  the  panels  of  the  Capitol,  with  freedom  to  choose  what  sub- 
ject he  would,  he  wrote  elaborately,  giving  many  reasons  for  declin- 
ing, but  not  the  true  one  —  that  he  had  no  longer  the  energy  and 
ambition  to  attempt  such  a  task. 

But  his  life  was  happy.  He  was  surrounded  by  friends  who 
loved  and  admired  him  and  who  shielded  him  from  any  harsh  con- 
tact with  an  uncongenial  world.  He  went  little  into  general  society, 
but  had  his  own  circle  to  which  visiting  strangers  who  were  found 
worthy  were  admitted  and  listened  spellbound  in  the  great  studio 


136  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

until  they  left  at  one  or  two  o'clock  in  the  morning;  even  then  their 
host  protested  that  the  evening  had  scarcely  begun,  for  it  was  one  of 
the  habits  of  AUston  s  later  life  to  sleep  by  day  and  to  talk  and  read 
and  work  by  night. 

Talk  leaves  no  permanent  record,  but  they  were  not  men  to  be 
easily  mistaken,  those  admirers  of  Allston.  From  Coleridge,  who  said 
of  him  "that  he  was  gifted  with  an  artistic  and  poetic  genius  unsur- 
passed by  any  man  of  his  age,"  to  Lowell,  who  declared  that  he 
was  to  be  classed  at  once  "  with  those  individuals,  rarer  than  great 
captains  and  almost  as  rare  as  great  poets,  whom  Nature  sends  into 
the  world  to  fill  the  arduous  office  of  Gentleman,"  he  came  in  con- 
tact with  the  choicest  minds  of  his  time  and  made  on  them  all  the 
impression  of.  something  wonderful,  of  something  quite  beyond  the 
dull  average  of  humanity.  It  is  inevitable  that  such  rare  spirits 
should  fail  to  express  themselves  in  enduring  form.  The  materials, 
the  carved  stone  or  the  painted  canvas,  are  too  recalcitrant,  and 
besides  it  is  but  a  small  part  of  the  message  which  is  conceived  in  a 
form  that  may  be  expressed  to  the  eye.  Allston  erred,  as  West  did, 
in  trying  to  put  into  a  picture  emotions  that  were  not  pictorial. 
His  contemporaries  had  the  same  emotions  and  understood.  We  do 
not,  and  it  is  as  unlikely  in  his  case  as  in  that  of  West  that  posterit}^ 
will  ever  renew  its  interest  in  his  works.  They  are,  however,  better 
than  West's  —  not  done  with  the  same  monotonous  facility,  but  with 
traces  of  real  distinction.  The  color  is  harmonious  and  pleasing ; 
though  all  of  Allston's  color  has  faded,  owing  to  his  system  of  glaz- 
ing, so  that  it  has  no  longer  the  richness  that  surprised  his  Italian 
friends.  The  line  is  especially  sensitive  and  sure.  "Jeremiah  dictat- 
ing to  the  Scribe  Baruch,"  even  if  a  little  empty,  would  still  hold  its 
own  with  most  academic  work  ;  but  during  his  life  the  taste  for 
such   subjects  had   already  begun   to  decline. 

They  were  admired  at  the  exhibition  of  his  works  held  in  1839 
after  his  death  but  rather  perfunctorily.  A  more  sincere  enthusiasm 
was  displayed  toward  the  smaller  canvases  with  graceful,  sentimental 
figures  or  heads,  which  Allston  himself  had  regarded  as  of  little  im- 
pr)rtance.  To  judge  them  fairh',  we  must  remember  how  barren 
American  art  had  been  up  to  that  time  of  anything  approaching 
them  in  grace  or  refinement.      Their  sweetness  was  not  iiisipid,  their 


THi-:  LAST  PUPILS  OK  \vi:sr 


^o7 


drawinq;  was  delicate,  tlieir  color  was  refined.  Thev  were  not  strone, 
independent  masterpieces,  but  there  was  in  them  the  breath  of  a  finer, 
more  delicate  inspiration  than  had  api)eared  before  in  American  art 
or  than  was  to  appear  again  for  a  generation.  What  the  work  and 
the  life  of  Allston  meant  to  those  of  his  compatriots  whose  souls 
yearned  for  some  touch  of  beauty  and  culture  in  their  meagre  and 
commonplace  surrounding,  we  can  hardly  a])preciate  to-day.  We 
get  a  glimpse  of  it,  though,  in  a  review  in  the  Dial  of  the  Allston 
exhibition,  by  Margaret  F'uller.  It  is  written  in  absolute  ignorance 
of  any  technical  standards,  but  is  good,  emotional  criticism, 

"  The  calm  and  meditative  cast  of  these  pictures,  the  ideal  beautv 
that  shone  through  rather  than  in  them,  and  the  harmony  of  coloring 
were  as  unlike  anything  else  I  saw  as  the  Vicar  of  Wakefiehi  to 
Cooper's  novels.  I  seemed  to  recognize  in  painting  that  self-pos- 
sessed elegance,  that  transparent  depth,  which  I  most  admired  in 
literature ;  I  thought  with  delight  that  such  a  man  had  been  able 
to  grow^  up  in  our  bustling,  reasonable  community,  that  he  had  kept 
his  foot  upon  the  ground,  yet  never  lost  sight  of  the  rose-clouds  of 
beauty  floating  above  him.  I  saw  too  that  he  had  not  been  troubled 
but  had  possessed  his  own  soul  with  the  blandest  patience,  and  I 
hoped,  I  scarce  knew  what,  probably  the  mot  cTenigme  for  which  we 
are  all  looking —  How  the  poetical  mind  can  live  and  work  in  peace 
and  good  faith !  how  it  may  unfold  to  its  due  perfection  in  an 
unpoetical  society." 

To-day  the  answer  to  the  riddle  seems  to  be  that  the  mind  could 
unfold  to  perfection,  but  it  could  not  produce  its  perfect  work  in  its 
uncongenial  surroundings. 


x^. 


CHAPTER    VIII 

DECLINE   OF   THE    ENGLISH    INFLUENCE 

Passing  of  the  Students  of  West.  —  Stuart's  Old  Age.  —  King.  —  Waldo  and 
Jewett.  —  John  Weslev  Jarvis.  —  His  Youth  in  Philadelphia.  —  Begins  Por- 
trait Painting  in  New  York.  —  Southern  Trips.  —  Work  and  Character. — 
Thomas  Sully.  —  Youth.  —  Work  with  his  Brother.  —  Marries  his  Widow. — 
Visits  Stuart.  —  Goes  to  London.  —  Studies  with  King  under  West.  —  Set- 
tles in  Philadelphia.  —  Character  and  Work 

The  venerable  West  died  in  1820,  five  years  after  Copley.  The 
group  formed  by  Allston  and  his  youthful  admirers  was  among  the 
last  to  receive  his  counsels,  and  practically  the  last  Americans  to  go 
to  England  to  learn  the  rudiments  of  painting.  The  loss  of  the 
personal  aid  and  counsel  of  the  ever  helpful  and  generous  President 
of  the  Royal  Academy  was  undoubtedly  a  factor  in  the  change,  but 
also  the  outburst  of  artistic  force  in  England  was  beginning  to  lose 
its  first  vigor  and  unity  and  to  dissipate  itself  into  divergent  chan- 
nels. In  some  of  these,  as  in  landscape,  the  originality  and  talent 
displayed  was  not  less  admirable  than  in  the  earlier  work ;  but  por- 
traiture, figure  painting,  and  most  of  the  branches  which  appeal  to  the 
student  showed  a  distinct  falling  away  in  both  knowledge  and  feel- 
ing^. The  influence  of  the  early  school  was  perpetuated  here  both 
by  those  actually  trained  in  it  and  by  their  imitators.  Stuart  died 
in  1828,  and  Charles  W.  Peale  about  the  same  time;  but  Rembrandt 
Peale,  Charles  B.  King,  and  Waldo  lived  on  to  or  through  the  begin- 
ning of  the  Civil  War,  and  Morse  died  in  1872.  Many  of  the  men 
were  diverted  to  other  pursuits,  or  through  discouragement  relaxed 
the  practice  of  painting;  but  Stuart  labored  to  the  last  with  a  con- 
stantly increasing  excellence.  Age  diminished  the  old  restlessness, 
and  he  settled  in  Boston  and  lived  there  fairly  contentedly.  He  was 
recognized  as  by  far  our  best  portrait  painter,  and  never  was  entirely 
without  sitters,  though  his  independence  and  his  old  hot  temper 
sometimes  made  liis  commissions  fewer  than  men  with  less  talent 
but  more  ingratiating  manner  got.      His  outbursts  were  known  and 

138 


FIG.    30.  -  WALDO  :     PORTRAIT   OF    REV.   DR.   GARDINER    SPRING,    METROPOLITAN 

MUSEUM. 


DECLINE    OF   THE    EXC;LISH    INFLUENCE  141 

dreaded.  A  loving  Inisband  kept  coiiiplaiiiing  of  the  portrait  of  his 
excellent  but   p\:un   wife,  until   the  painter's  patience  gave  way  and 

he  cried,  "  What  a  d business  is  this  of  a  portrait  painter  —  you 

bring  him  a  potato,  and  expect  he  will  paint  you  a  peach."  And 
when  Sully  was  frightened  at  having  accidentally  trod  on  a  canvas,  he 

was  told,  "  Oh  !  you  needn't  mind,  it's  only  a  d F'rench  barber," 

viz.,  —  Jerome  Bonaparte.  He  was  besides  kept  busy  denouncing  the 
countless  copyists  of  his  portraits  of  Washington,  who  tried  to  pass 
off  their  works  as  originals.  He  retained,  however,  with  his  old 
temper,  his  old  wit  and  ingratiating  charm.  With  his  huge  snuff- 
box, his  anecdotes,  and  his  repartees,  he  was  a  character  in  Boston, 
and  when  he  died,  in  1828,  he  was  properly  mourned  in  the  public 
press,  and  he  left,  if  not  much  money,  a  memory  which  endured  long 
after  him. 

Another  of  West's  pupils.  King,  settled  in  Washington  and 
painted  portraits  for  forty  years  of  all  the  political  celebrities;  a  man 
of  exemplary  character  and  simple  life,  who  left  a  handsome  compe- 
tence, bequeathing  pictures  and  an  endowment  to  the  Redwood 
Library  at  Newport,  his  birthplace. 

Waldo,  a  man  of  similar  type,  also  stuck  to  his  profession  for 
over  half  a  century  after  his  return  from  England,  practising  mostly 
in  New  York,  where  there  are  still  to  be  seen  scores  of  heads  by  him, 
of  dignified,  benevolent  orentlemen  with  white  hair  and  white  chokers, 
or  of  ladies  in  wonderful  caps  and  shawls ;  the  faces  thinly  but 
skilfully  painted,  with  a  suggestion  of  West's  technique,  but  with 
more  accuracy  of  drawing,  as  was  fitting  in  a  portrait  painter.  If  the 
satin  lapels  of  the  gentlemen's  coats  or  the  leg-of-mutton  sleeves  of 
the  ladies  are  finished  with  a  laborious  completeness,  adorned  with 
shining  high  lights,  it  is  probable  that  the  work  will  be  signed  by 
the  firm  name,  Waldo  and  Jewett.  Jewett  was  another  Connecti- 
cut youth,  who  coming  originally  for  instruction  as  an  apprentice 
was  kindly  received  and  made  a  partner,  and  for  many  years  the  pair 
worked  in  unison,  turning  out  work  so  quiet  and  unaggressive  that 
when  its  really  considerable  technical  merit  is  revealed  on  close 
examination  it  comes  as  a  surprise. 

One  of  the  picturesque  characters  of  the  early  years  of  the  nine- 
teenth century,  almost  the  same  age  as  Allston,  and  as  well  known 


142  HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

though  in  a  different  way,  was  John  Wesley  Jarvis.  Born  in  Eng- 
land in  17S0,  he  was  named  after  his  uncle,  the  famous  founder  of 
Methodism,  and  lived  with  him  as  a  child  during  his  early  years  until 
he  was  five.  A  certain  similarity  may  be  traced  in  the  temperaments 
of  the  two.  Both  were  of  exceptional  ability,  forcible,  eloquent, 
with  strong  and  generous  feelings,  and  a  power  to  hold  and  influence 
others ;  but  the  talents  of  the  nephew  were  early  diverted  from  the 
path  of  his  saintly  uncle.  When  he  was  five  he  joined  his  father, 
who  had  settled  in  Philadelphia,  and  unlike  all  the  other  painters  of 
the  time  who  attained  to  any  eminence  in  America,  he  never  re- 
turned to  England  or  profited  by  foreign  instruction.  In  fact,  he 
had  no  regular  training,  but  picked  up  the  mysteries  of  the  craft  as 
he  could,  and  his  own  description  of  his  first  efforts  is  amusing. 
"  In  my  schoolboy  days  the  painters  of  Philadelphia  were  Clark,  a 
miniature  painter,  Galagher,  a  painter  of  portraits  and  signs;  he  was 
a  German  who,  with  his  hat  over  one  eye,  was  more  an  fait  at  walk- 
ing Chestnut  Street  than  at  either  face  or  sign  painting.  Then 
there  was  Jeremiah  Paul,  who  painted  better  and  would  hop  farther 
than  any  of  them  ;  another  who  painted  red  lions  and  black  bears, 
as  well  as  beaux  and  belles,  was  old  Mr.  Pratt,  and  the  last  that  I 
remember  of  that  day  was  Rutter,  an  honest  sign  painter,  who  never 
pretended  or  aspired  to  paint  the  human  face  divine,  except  to  hang 
on  the  outside  of  a  house ;  these  worthies,  when  work  was  plenty, 
flags  and  fire-buckets,  engines  and  eagles  in  demand,  used  to  work 
in  partnership,  and  I,  between  school  hours,  worked  for  them  all, 
delighted  to  have  the  command  of  a  brush  and  a  paint  pot.  Such 
was  my  introduction  to  the  fine  arts  and  their  professors. 

"  About  this  time  I  first  saw  Stuart,  who  occasionally  employed 
Paul  to  letter  a  book,  for  example  the  books  in  the  portrait  of  Wash- 
ington, which  Jerry  thought  it  no  dishonor  to  execute;  the  two 
great  men,  however,  quarrelled,  and  Paul  threatened  to  slap  Stuart's 
face,  trusting,  I  j^rcsume,  to  being  able  to  hop  out  of  the  way  of  his 
arm.  Mr.  Pratt  was  at  this  time,  say  1790,  an  old  man,  and  as  he 
encouraged  my  visits,  I  frequently  passed  my  out-of-school  hours 
at  his  shop,  making  figures  of  what  passed  for  men  and  things  by 
dint  of  daubing  on  my  part  and  imagination  on  the  part  of  the 
beholder." 


DECLINE    OF   THE    ENGLISH    INFLUENCE 


14: 


This  gives  a  vivid  picture  of  the  state  of  the  arts  in  Philadelphia 
at  the  end  of  the  century.  The  omission  of  Peale's  name  is  notice- 
able, but  he  was  busy  witli  his  museum  at  the  time  and  perhaps 
was  inaccessible  to  Jarvis.  Mr.  Pratt  is,  of  course,  Matthew  Pratt, 
spoken  of  before  as  West's  first  pupil,  and  Jarvis  may  have  had  from 
him  some  training  in  the  English  methods  of  work.  When  the 
time  came  to  choose  a  trade,  the  prints  in  the  shop  windows  seemed 
much  more  perfect  to  him  than  the  paintings  of  his  contemporaries, 
so  he  chose  to  become  an  engraver  and  was  apprenticed  to  one 
Savage,  "  the  most  ignorant  beast  that  ever  imposed  upon  the  public. 
He  painted  what  he  called  fancy  pieces  and  historical  subjects,  and 
they  were  published  as  being  designed  and  engraved  by  him, 
though  his  painting  was  execrable  and  he  knew  nothing  of  engrav- 
ing. He  was  not  qualified  to  teach  me  any  art  but  that  of  decep- 
tion." The  incapacity  of  the  master  was  the  advantage  of  the  pupil, 
for  it  gave  him  greater  opportunities.  David  Edwin,  an  English 
engraver,  had  come  to  America,  and  being  in  straitened  circum- 
stances was  employed  by  Savage,  and  from  him  Jarvis  learned  to 
draw  and  engrave.  The  two  moved  together  to  New  York,  but 
there  Edwin  became  better  known,  and  no  longer  needing  the  aid 
of  Savage  returned  to  Philadelphia  as  an  independent  engraver, 
while  Jarvis  remained  to  the  end  of  his  apprenticeship  and  made, 
engraved,  printed,  and  delivered  to  customers  the  works  that  were 
attributed  to  his  master.  When  his  time  of  service  expired,  to 
quote  again  from  his  own  story:  "I  began  to  engrave  on  my  own 
account ;  but  Edw^in  visiting  New  York  asked  me  to  go  and  see  a 
great  portrait  painter,  not  long  since  arrived,  and  full  of  employ- 
ment—  with  of  course  his  pockets  full  of  money.  I  went  to  the 
painting  room  of  Mr.  Martin  and  found  him  overwhelmed  with 
business.  '  This,'  said  Edwin,  '  is  the  best  portrait  painter  in  New 
York.'  '  If  that  is  the  case,'  said  I,  '  I  will  be  the  best  portrait 
painter  in  New  York  to-morrow,  for  I  can  paint  better  than  Mr. 
Martin.'     And   I   have  been  at  it  ever  since." 

The  foregoing  quotations  are  from  Dunlap,  who  knew  Jarvis 
well  up  to  the  end  of  his  life,  and  who  had  the  details  of  his  early 
years  directly  from  him.  They  did  not  meet  until  1805  or  1806, 
when    Jarvis    occupied    rooms   on    Park    Row  with    Joseph   Wood, 


144 


HISTORY    OF    AMERICAN    PAINTING 


whom  be  was  teaching  to  draw,  and  with  whose  aid  and  that  of  a 
profile  machine  which  lie  had  invented  he  used  to  draw  silhouettes 
in  black  for  a  dollar  and  on  gold-leaf  for  five.  Malbone,  happening 
to  visit  the  painting  room,  was  asked  for  some  advice,  and  readily 
offered  to  instruct  them  both  in  miniature  painting,  to  such  effect 
that  Wood,  a  farmer's  boy  who  had  been  apprenticed  to  a  silver- 
smith, became  a  creditable  miniaturist  and  practised  successfully 
first  in  Philadelphia  and  afterward  in  Washington.  Wood  was 
something  of  a  musician,  and  Jarvis  already  a  noted  raconteur. 
There  was  often  a  hundred  dollars  a  day  to  be  divided  up  as  the 
receipts  from  the  silhouette  industry  in  addition  to  the  painting, 
and  life  was  merry  on  Park  Row,  but  not,  Dunlap  says,  "  merry  and 
wise."  "  The  artists  indulged  in  the  excitements  and  experienced 
the  perplexities  of  mvstcrio2is  marriages,  and  it  is  probable  that 
these  perplexities  kept  them  both  poor,  and  confined  them  to  the 
society  of  young  men,  instead  of  that  respectable  communion  with 
ladies  and  the  refined  circles  of  the  city,  which  Malbone  enjoyed ; 
and  I  have  reason  to  think  that  these  mysteries  and  perplexities 
caused  the  dissolution  of  the  partnership  of  Jarvis  and  Wood  on  no 
friendly  terms." 

After  the  dissolution,  Jarvis  moved  to  Broadway,  making  a  spe- 
cialty of  little  heads  on  cardboard  at  five  dollars  apiece,  though 
painting  anything  else  that  was  called  for.  It  was  soon  after  this, 
in  the  autumn  of  1807,  that  Sully  being  without  work  in  New  York 
offered  himself  to  Jarvis  as  an  assistant,  and  the  latter,  while  employ- 
ing him  and  paying  him  liberally,  declared  that  it  was  a  great  shame 
that  such  a  man  should  want  work  in  an  inferior  position.  The 
connection  was  only  transitory,  for  Sully  soon  went  to  Philadelphia, 
and  Jarvis  remained  to  enjoy  his  po])ularity  in  New  York,  and  when 
that  showed  signs  of  weaning,  proceeded  to  Baltimore,  where  his 
capabilities  as  an  artist  and  a  diner-out  gave  him  a  great  success. 
This  was  the  first  of  the  visits  to  southern  cities,  which  became  a 
feature  of  his  life.  To  Baltimore  he  went  many  times,  but  he  kept 
continually  pushing  farther  south.  In  iSio  he  visited  Charleston, 
South  Carolina,  and  finally  got  as  far  as  New  Orleans,  taking  with 
him  on  the  trip  Henry  Inman,  who  had  been  apprenticed  to  him 
in  1814  wdien  fourteen  years  old. 


1,1G.    3i._JARVIS:    HENRY    CLAY,    CITY    HALL,    XLW    YUKK. 


DECLINE    OF   THE    ENGLISH    INFLUENCE 


147 


While  still  making  New  York  his  headquarters,  occupying  at 
one  time  what  had  been  the  governor's  mansion  in  Bowling  Green, 
then  used  as  a  custom  house,  these  southern  trips  continued  regu- 
larly to  employ  his  winters  with  great  social  and  financial  success. 
In  New  Orleans  especially,  he  painted  full-length  portraits  of 
Andrew  Jackson  and  all  the  military  and  naval  heroes,  and  was 
well  paid.  In  his  own  words:  "  My  purse  and  pockets  were  empty. 
I  spent  $3000  in  six  months  and  brought  three  thousand  to  New 
York.  The  next  winter  I  did  the  same."  At  the  prices  current 
in  those  times  (Jarvis  charged  $100  for  a  head  and  $150  for  head 
and  hands)  this  involved  an  enormous  production.  He  had  six 
sitters  a  day,  worked  an  hour  on  each,  and  then  handed  the  can- 
vases over  to  Inman,  who  put  in  the  background  and  draperies 
under  his  direction,  thus  enabling  him  to  turn  out  six  portraits  a 
week.  Inman  left  hini  and  set  up  for  himself  when  his  seven 
years' apprenticeship  was  over;  but  Jarvis  continued  to  work  with 
much  the  same  erratic  energy  until  his  continued  excesses  w^recked 
his  vigorous  constitution,  and  he  died  worn  out  in  body  and  mind 
at  the  age  of  fifty-four. 

Few  can  fail  to  regret  the  end  of  the  brilliant  life,  for  Jarvis  was 
no  man's  enemy  save  his  own.  It  is  true  he  always  abused  Stuart 
and  all  his  works,  but  too  openly  and  energetically  for  real  malice. 
Apart  from  that,  throughout  his  life  he  was,  in  his  erratic  and 
spasmodic  way,  a  kindly,  sympathetic  man.  And  this  from  his 
childhood,  when  he  aided  impulsively  and  efficiently  another  child 
who  was  lost,  down  to  his  latest  years  when  during  terrific  epi- 
demics of  yellow  fever  or  malignant  cholera  he  frequented  the 
hospitals  with  an  Olympian  indifference  to  danger,  making  patho- 
logical drawings  for  the  doctors,  and  giving  freely  from  his  limited 
means. 

As  an  artist  his  work  suffers  from  his  manner  of  life.  He  was 
not  negligent  in  acquiring  the  tccJuiiquc  of  his  profession,  he  drew 
from  the  antique,  studied  anatomy  seriously,  and  especially  became 
an  enthusiast  in  phrenology,  then  a  novelty;  but  his  work  shows 
the  haste  of  production  —  not  so  much  in  lack  of  finish  as  in  lack 
of  inspiration.  It  is  usually  commonplace,  without  distinction  of 
drawing  or  brilliancy  of  color.      At  times  he  rises  above  this,  and 


148  HISTORY    OF   AMHRICAX    I'AIXTING 

he  usually  gets  the  character  of  his  sitter;  but  his  best  is  far  from 
equalling  Sully's.  His  continued  success  (and  he  liad  an  abundance 
of  commissions  as  long  as  he  was  in  condition  to  execute  them)  was 
due  as  much  to  his  social  as  to  his  artistic  ability.  His  character  was 
of  the  type  termed  convivial,  as  was  also  Stuart's;  but  Stuart's  associ- 
ates were  on  a  higher  plane,  and  he  kept  something  of  the  dignity  of 
an  earlier  day.  He  moved  in  the  best  society  of  Boston,  and  though 
his  bills  for  port  and  madeira  were  larger  than  normal,  yet  Sully 
who  knew  him  in  his  old  age  declares  that  he  never  saw  him  in 
the  least  affected  by  wine.  Jarvis,  on  the  other  hand,  remained  the 
Bohemian,  squandering  money  without  thought  of  the  future,  eating 
and  drinking  of  the  rarest  and  costliest  and  living  in  squalor,  with- 
out the  comfort  or  decency  which  would  have  cost  nothing  except  a 
little  self-restraint.  He  was  welcome  everywhere,  but  somewhat 
as  a  licensed  buffoon.  His  stories  were  innumerable,  and  related 
by  himself  to  a  dinner  party  well  flushed  with  wine  their  success  was 
enormous.  Some  were  adapted  to  the  stage  by  Dunlap,  Hackett, 
and  Matthews,  and  even  when  related  in  cold  print  they  are  amus- 
ing. There  was  something  of  the  actor  about  Jarvis  himself  and 
much  oi  the  press-agent.  He  liked  notoriety  —  nionstrari  digito 
—  and  he  affected  singularity  in  dress  and  demeanor.  He  wore  a 
long,  fur-trimmed  coat,  and  a  couple  of  huge  dogs  followed  him, 
sometimes  carrying  his  market  basket.  To  his  southern  friends, 
when  they  passed  through  New  York,  he  showed  a  lavish  hospi- 
tality—  banquets  where  all  fluids  were  obtainable  save  water,  where 
canvas-backs  were  eaten  with  broken  handled  knives  and  one- 
tined  forks,  and  where  the  soap  was  thrown  out  of  the  shax'ing  mug 
to  furnish  an  extra  glass.  The  result  was  incvitaljle:  "he  died  in 
extreme  poverty  under  the  roof  of  his  sister,  Mrs.  Childs." 

The  contrast  to  Jarvis  is  offered  by  Sully,  who  has  been  men- 
tioned as  serving  him  as  an  assistant  for  a  few  months  in  180S. 
Like  Jarvis,  who  was  three  years  his  senior,  Sully  was  born  in 
England  and  came  to  America  wliile  a  child.  His  parents  were 
actors  of  considerable  reputation  in  the  English  provinces,  and  their 
children,  of  whom  there  were  many,  inherited  talent.  Thomas  Vv^as 
the  youngest  son  and  nine  years  old  when  his  parents  were  induced 
by  Mr.  West,  the  manager  of  the  Virginia  and   Charleston,  South 


FIG.  ;2.  -SULLY  :  DR.  SAMUEL  COATES,  PENNSYLVANIA  IIOSPLIAL,  PiIILAUELPHL\. 


DECLINE    OE   THE    ENGLISH    INFLUENCE  15 1 

Carolina,  theatres,  to  remove  to  tlie  latter  city,  and  there  in  1793 
the  young  Sully  met  at  school  Charles  Fraser,  the  future  miniaturist 
and  friend  of  Allston.  The  two  boys  mutually  encouraged  each 
other  to  scribble  their  copy-books  full  of  drawings;  Fraser,  the 
elder  by  a  year,  being  the  leading  spirit.  This,  however,  only 
continued  for  a  couple  of  years  until  1795,  when  Sully,  then  twelve, 
was  placed  in  an  insurance  broker's  of^ce,  where  after  the  manner 
of  youthful  artists  of  all  times  he  neglected  his  work  and  spoiled 
much  good  paper  with  drawings  of  heads  and  figures  until  the 
broker  finally  advised  that  he  should  be  devoted  to  art  instead  of 
business.  This  was  easily  arranged,  for  one  of  his  sisters  had 
married  a  French  emigre,  Mr.  Belzons,  who  had  been  forced  by  the 
vicissitudes  of  the  Revolution  to  leave  France  and  to  employ  what 
he  had  merely  cultivated  as  an  accomplishment  as  a  means  of  sup- 
port ;  and  though  but  an  indifferent  artist  he  managed  to  support 
his  family  by  his  miniature  painting.  With  him  Sully  stayed  until 
he  was  sixteen  ;  but  then  Mr.  Belzons,  being  of  a  hasty  temper,  flew 
into  a  passion  over  an  imagined  neglect,  the  two  came  to  blows, 
and  finally  the  boy  took  his  hat  and  left  the  house.  He  suffered 
some  hardship,  but  friends  came  to  his  aid  and  he  was  finally 
enabled  to  reach  his  brother  Lawrence  at   Norfolk. 

Lawrence  Sully  was  but  a  poor  painter  and  apparently  attempted 
nothing  more  than  miniatures.  Thomas  soon  surpassed  him  in  skill 
and  became  the  main  support  of  Lawrences  family,  which  consisted 
of  a  wife  and  numerous  children,  but  he  tired  of  water  color.  Fired 
with  ambition  by  the  sight  of  some  portraits  by  Bembridge  and  one 
by  Angelica  Kauffman  he  attempted  to  paint  in  oil,  though  his 
ignorance  of  the  method  was  so  great  that  he  mixed  his  colors 
with  olive  oil  and  was  surprised  when  they  did  not  dry.  A  sign 
painter  gave  him  some  knowledge  of  the  rudiments  of  the  craft 
and  finally  with  great  trepidation  he  visited  Bembridge  himself,  who 
was  good  to  the  lad,  showed  him  what  he  could,  and  painted  his 
portrait,  explaining  his  palette  and  the  mixing  of  tints  as  he  pro- 
ceeded. Even  this  increase  of  knowledge  was  not  enough  to  make 
the  efforts  of  the  artists  profitable;  the  elder  brother  went  back 
to  Richmond,  which  promised  more  remunerative  employment,  and 
his  family  soon  followed  him.      Thomas,  left  to  himself,  gained  in 


152 


HISTORY    OF   AMKRICAN    PAINTIXCx 


a  year  one  luindred  and  twenty  dollars,  which  was  enough  to  main- 
tain him  in  comfort.  He  rejoined  his  brother  at  Richmond,  but 
feeling  the  need  of  wider  knowledge  he  determined  to  visit  Eng- 
land and  started  by  a  system  of  rigid  economy  to  save  sufficient 
money  for  the  trip.  He  was  on  the  way  to  success  when  his 
brother  died,  leaving  his  wife  and  children  unprovided  for  and 
unprotected.  The  painter  at  once  gave  up  his  cherished  plans, 
returned  from  Petersburg,  where  he  was  at  the  time,  and  undertook 
the  support  of  his  brother's  family,  and  something  over  a  year  after- 
ward married  his  widow  —  a  step  that  he  never  had  cause  to  regret. 

The  first  success  of  the  young  artist  came  through  his  friends  of 
his  father's  profession.  Thomas  A.  Cooper,  a  famous  actor  of  the 
time,  sat  to  Sully  during  a  professional  visit  to  Richmond  and  later, 
when  he  became  the  lessee  and  manager  of  the  New  York  theatre, 
invited  him  to  that  city,  secured  him  sitters,  and  opened  to  him  a 
credit  of  a  thousand  dollars.  This  was  greater  prosperity  than  the 
artist  had  ever  known,  but  he  was  conscious  of  his  deficiencies  and 
he  paid  Trumbull  a  hundred  dollars  for  a  portrait  of  his  wife  in  order 
to  learn  what  he  could  during  its  execution.  He  wished,  however,  to 
see  Stuart,  whom  he  rightly  regarded  as  the  first  painter  of  the  coun- 
try and  for  tliat  purpose  made  a  trip  to  Boston  where  he  saw  the 
master,  who  received  him  as  kindly  as  Bembridge  had  done,  per- 
mitted him  to  stand  behind  his  chair  while  he  painted,  and  finally 
arranged  to  have  him  paint  a  portrait  and  submit  it  for  criticism. 
This  was  finally  done,  and  after  a  long  examination,  which  was  an 
agony  for  the  aspirant,  he  received  the  admonition  :  "  Keep  what  you 
have  got  and  get  as  much  more  as  you  can." 

The  oracle  was  dark  but  not  entirely  discouraging,  and  above  all 
it  was  gratuitous,  for  Sully  was  still  in  need  and  could  not  afford  many 
lessons  at  a  hundred  dollars.  He  had  had  few  orders  in  Boston,  and 
it  was  on  his  return  to  New  York  that  he  was  obliged  to  apply  to 
Jarvis  for  a  position  as  assistant.  From  there  he  soon  moved  to 
Philadelphia,  where  he  occupied  a  house  with  Benjamin  Trott  the 
miniaturist,  a  skilful  and  |)opular  jxainter.  But  Sully  was  still  in 
difificult  circumstances.  His  family  wms  large  and  increasing,  his 
patronage  fluctuating.  He  had  l)een  full  v  employed  at  fifty  dollars  a 
head;    but    business    failing    he    got    u]}    a    subscription    for    thirty 


DECLINE    OF   THE    ENGLISH    INFLUENCE  1 53 

heads  at  thirty  dollars  each,  which  tided  him  over  the  period  of  depres- 
sion. He  still  nursed  the  desire  to  visit  England.  His  friend  Ben- 
jamin Wilcox  finally  opened  a  subscription  at  two  hundred  dollars 
for  each  signer,  the  amount  raised  to  be  given  to  Sully,  and  in  return 
each  subscriber  was  to  receive  a  copy  from  an  old  master.  Seven 
subscribed,  thus  raising  fourteen  hundred  dollars,  a  sum  entirely  in- 
adequate for  the  purpose.  Wilcox  opened  his  purse  without  restric- 
tion, and  on  him  the  artist  finally  drew  for  five  hundred  dollars, 
but  even  with  this  aid  the  trip  would  have  been  impossible 
without  the  most  pinching  economy.  One  thousand  of  the 
fourteen  hundred  he  left  with  his  family  and  with  the  rest  started 
for  London. 

Fortunately  the  first  letter  he  presented  was  to  Charles  B.  King, 
who  was  a  student  of  about  his  own  age  (two  years  younger),  but 
who  had  been  already  four  years  in  London  and  could  appreciate 
Sully's  inexperience.  "  How  long  do  you  intend  staying  in  Eng- 
land ?  "  "  Three  years  if  I  can."  "  And  how  much  money  have  you 
brought  with  you  ?  "  "  Four  hundred  dollars."  "  Why,  my  good  sir, 
that  is  not  enough  for  three  months —  I'll  tell  you  what —  I  am  not 
ready  to  go  home  —  my  funds  are  almost  expended,  and  before  I  saw 
you  I  had  been  contriving  a  plan  to  spin  them  out  and  give  me  more 
time.  Can  you  live  low  ?  "  "  All  I  want  is  bread  and  w^ater."  "  O, 
then  you  may  live  luxuriously,  for  we  will  add  potatoes  and  milk  to 
it.  It  will  do,  we  will  hire  three  rooms,  they  will  serve  us  both  —  we 
will  buy  a  stock  of  potatoes  —  take  in  bread  and  milk  daily  —  keep 
our  landlady  in  good  humour,  and  (by-the-bye)  conceal  from  her  the 
motives  of  our  mode  of  life  by  a  little  present  now  and  then,  and 
—  w^ork  away  like  merry  fellows."  The  arrangement  was  agreed 
upon  and  successfully  carried  out.  The  two  young  men  were  alike 
not  only  in  their  poverty  but  in  their  enthusiasm,  their  industry,  and 
the  simple  integrity  of  their  lives.  King  introduced  Sully  to  West, 
who  was  to  him  "  like  a  father,"  a  phrase  continually  applied  to  W  est 
by  his  pupils,  though  the  first  of  them,  Matthew  Pratt,  being  consider- 
ably the  elder,  was  obliged  to  say  "  like  a  brother." 

When  it  came  to  making  the  copies  for  which  he  had  engaged 
himself.  Sully  found  that  the  pictures  in  England  were  in  private 
possession,  difficult  to  see  and  impossible  to  work  from.     He  man- 


154 


HISTORY    OF    MODERN    rAINTIXG 


aecd  to  visit  some  of  the  collections,  but  it  seemed  that  to  fulfil  his 
contract  he  would  be  obliged  to  go  to  France,  where  paintings  were 
more  accessible.  But  West  when  consulted  said :  "  I  understand 
that  3-our  object  on  your  return  is  portrait  painting?"  "Yes, 
sir."  "Then  stay  in  England.  You  wish  to  fulfil  an  engagement 
and  improve  yourself  by  copying  some  pictures.  My  collection,  old 
and  new,  is  at  your  service.  There  are  specimens  of  the  ancient 
masters  and  of  the  moderns.  Take  them  as  you  \A-ant  them  and 
come  to  me  for  my  advice  when  you  want  it." 

This  is  no  more  remarkable  for  readiness  and  capacity  to  help  a 
student  than  for  the  soundness  of  the  advice.  England  was  still  the 
place  for  a  portrait  painter  to  study,  and  it  would  have  been  a  seri- 
ous detriment  to  Sully  to  have  gone  to  Paris  for  a  short  visit  in  an 
altogether  different  school.  As  it  was  he  stayed  in  London  nine 
months,  painting  by  day,  drawing  by  night,  studying  anatomy  in 
the  spare  time  until  his  funds  were  exhausted  and  he  was  obliged 
to  return,  althouQ^h  West  wrote  a  letter  ureins^  that  friends  should 
furnish  funds  for  a  longer  stay. 

Back  in  Philadelphia  with  his  family  and  sharing  as  before  his 
house  with  Trott,  he  found  the  effects  of  his  study  in  increasing 
orders  and  freedom  from  financial  cares.  He  met  Leslie  now,  and 
painted  a  head  to  show  him  how  to  work  in  oil,  just  before  the 
talented  boy  left  for  London  to  join  King,  Morse,  and  Allston.  He 
was  painting  some  of  his  best  work,  and  from  these  years  date  his 
portrait  of  Cooke  as  Richard  the  Third,  now  in  the  Philadelphia 
Academy  and  portraits  of  Dr.  Rush  and  Dr.  Coates  in  the  Penn- 
sylvania Hospital.  P"or  some  years  his  receipts  were  over 
$4000,  which  was  considered  affluence  in  those  days.  He  was 
paid  $500  for  a  portrait  of  Decatur  painted  for  the  city  of 
New  York,  which  was  desirous  of  commemorating  the  heroes 
of  the  War  of  181 2  then  recently  concluded.  His  delicacy 
prevented  him  from  receiving  more  commissions  of  the  series; 
for  although  he  was  asked  to  paint  several  others,  the  order  for  one 
of  them  had  originally  been  given  to  Stuart,  and  through  some  mis- 
understanding with  the  sitter  or  the  corporation,  or  through  some 
eccentricity  of  the  })ainter,  work  had  l)ecn  discontinued  and  Sully  was 
unwilling  to  appear  as  casting  a  slight  on  a  man  who  had  benefited 


FIG.    33.  — SULLY:     MRS.    JOHN    RTDGELV,    OWNED    BY    MRS.    JOHN'    RIDGELY, 

HAMFION,   MD. 


DECLINE   OF  THE    ENGLISH    INFLUENCE  1 57 

liim  and  whom  he  considered  liis  superior  as  an  artist.  Finall}^ 
when  urged  furtlier,  lie  wrote  to  Stuart  offering  to  secure  the  com- 
mission for  him  and  to  aid  him  in  the  execution  of  the  backgrounds, 
draperies,  and  other  accessories  ;  but  Stuart  did  not  answer  the  letter, 
though  some  years  afterward  (wlien  it  was  too  late)  he  himself  pro- 
posed a  similar  partnership  to  Sully,  declaring:  "We  can  carry  all 
the  continent."  As  it  was,  Jarvis,  who  had  no  scruples  in  regard  to 
Stuart,  got  the  commission. 

Soon  after  this  Sully's  prosperity  began  to  diminish.  Sitters  fell 
off  a  little,  and  the  work  which  he  commenced  as  a  supplement  to  his 
portrait  painting  was  not  remunerative.  A  drawing  to  be  done  for 
an  engraver  from  West's  "  Christ  healing  the  Sick "  was  under- 
taken for  $500,  but  when  it  had  been  proceeded  with  for  some 
weeks  it  was  seen  that  the  price  was  inadequate  for  the  work, 
and  when  an  advance  was  refused,  it  had  to  be  given  up  and  the 
labor  already  expended  was  lost.  Then  the  North  Carolina  legisla- 
ture applied  to  him  for  two  portraits  of  Washington,  and  his  ambi- 
tion suggested  to  him  that  he  should  propose  to  paint  instead  some 
prominent  action  of  the  hero,  and  he  mentioned  the  crossing  of  the 
Delaware.  This  was  agreed  upon,  but  when  he  wrote  asking  for 
the  dimensions  of  the  space  to  be  occupied,  he  received  no  answer 
and  started  a  great  canvas  on  his  own  responsibility,  and  the  under- 
taking with  all  its  infinite  and  unfamiliar  difficulties  of  composition, 
models,  and  costume  was  a  burden  and  expense  to  him ;  portrait 
painting  fell  off,  money  had  to  be  borrowed  to  complete  it,  and 
finally  he  found  that  there  was  no  place  fitted  for  it  and  the  labor 
of  years  was  thrown  on  his  hands.  Again  he  was  forced  to  pass 
difficult  years  without  patronage,  and  in  1824  he  was  on  the  point 
of  moving  to  Boston  with  his  family  in  answer  to  invitations  that 
had  been  given  him ;  but  then  his  townsmen  stirred  from  their 
apathy  and  offered  him  commissions  for  portraits  in  order  to  retain 
him.     The  tide  turned,  and  a  modest  prosperity  set  in. 

Soon  after  he  moved  to  a  large,  old-fashioned  brick  mansion  on 
Sixth  Street,  just  above  Chestnut,  which  was  built  for  him  by 
Stephen  Girard,  with  rooms  suitable  for  painting  and  exhibition 
purposes,  and  which  remained  his  home  for  more  than  forty  years. 
Toward  the  end  of  his  life,  the  city  authorities  abstained  from  tear- 


158  HISTORY    OF    AMERICAN    PAIXTIXG 

ing  it  down  to  make  way  for  a  proposed  street,  out  of  regard  to  the 
old  painter,  who  was  touched  by  the  kindness.  Only  once  did  he 
leave  it  for  long.  That  was  when,  in  1.S37,  he  made  another  visit  to 
England  for  a  couple  of  years,  painting  a  numl3er  of  portraits,  and 
especially  one  of  Queen  Victoria  on  a  commission  from  the  St. 
George's  Society  of  Philadelphia.  The  Queen,  who  was  still  very 
young,  charmed  both  Sully  and  his  daughter  by  her  simple  frank- 
ness and  naturalness,  and  Miss  Sully,  who  was  about  the  same  age, 
used  to  tell  how  when  she  (Miss  Sully)  was  posing  for  her  father, 
arrayed  in  all  the  regalia  jewels,  which  weighed  some  forty  pounds, 
the  Queen  came  into  the  room  and  dropped  a  deep  courtesy  to 
the  emblems  of  authority  she  wore,  and  afterward  had  tea  with 
them,  seeming  to  take  a  real  pleasure  in  the  simple  manners  of  the 
painter. 

Sully  lived  until  1872,  and  after  this  record  of  his  life  it  seems 
unnecessary  to  say  that  he  was  a  good  man,  courageous  in  adversity, 
helpful  in  prosperity.  He  was,  moreover,  a  good  painter,  one  of  the 
best  in  America  from  the  time  he  returned  from  his  first  visit  to 
England  until  his  death.  He  was  not  the  equal  of  Stuart  (he 
would  himself  have  been  the  first  to  declare  it),  but,  putting  aside 
Stuart  who  is  in  a  class  by  himself,  it  would  be  difficult  to  mention 
any  superior.  He  was  skilful  in  his  handling,  with  a  feeling  for 
warm,  mellow  color  and  for  beauty.  This  last  sometimes  degen- 
erated into  mere  prcttiness  and  "  c"///V  "  ;  in  fact,  a  looseness  of  draw- 
ing was  his  besetting  fault,  which  was  much  remedied  by  his  first  trip 
to  London,  w^here  West  warned  him  against  it,  and  Leslie  also  said, 
"  Your  pictures  look  as  if  you  could  blow  them  away."  The  effect 
of  these  admonitions  was  shown  in  the  work  that  he  did  on  his 
return,  for  nothing  could  be  solider  or  firmer  than  the  portraits  of 
Dr.  Rush  and  Or.  Coates ;  admirably  posed  and  painted  with  a  rich, 
solid  impasto  in  the  figures,  the)'  recall  the  more  serious  work  of  the 
school  of  Reynolds,  which  was  already  passing  away.  Those  men 
had  taken  the  solid  craftsmanshi])  of  their  predecessors  and  had  built 
upon  it  a  grace  and  charm  of  their  own.  Their  successors  left  out 
much  of  the  foundation,  and  for  the  charm  depended  largely  on 
technical  processes  and  tricks.  Sully  felt  this  influence,  and  stands 
to    Stuart   much   as    Lawrence   stands   to    Reynolds.      Some  of   his 


DECLINE    OF   THE    ENCiLlSH    INFLUENCE 


159 


heads  of  actresses  are  but  empty  things,  only  fit  to  be  reproduced  in 
Lady's  Books  and  Albums,  a  fate  which  befell  them  ;  but  at  his 
best  he  is  a  reflex  of  the  good  old  time  with  its  feeling  for  style  and 
freedom  from  the  prosaic  rigidity  of  the  newer  men. 

The  portrait  of  Queen  Victoria  shows  his  skill  in  arrangement. 
He  had  to  paint  a  short,  dumpy  young  woman  with  retreating  chin 
and  protruding  eyes,  with  no  majesty,  and  not  much  comeliness 
except  her  youth.  He  has  represented  her  as  ascending  the  steps 
of  the  throne  with  a  long  cloak  trailing  behind  her,  which  gives  an 
appearance  of  height ;  the  face  nearly  full,  looking  backward  over 
her  shoulder  (the  Queen  had  good  shoulders).  The  warm  brown 
of  the  shadows,  the  crimson  of  the  carpet  and  robe,  the  gold  of  the 
embroidery  and  throne  leading  up  to  the  white  of  the  dress,  the 
shoulders  and  the  face,  make  a  pleasing  harmony.  The  whole 
is  thinly  painted  with  a  flowing  brush,  the  face  a  fair  likeness  but 
without  any  deep  searchings  for  character.  In  short,  an  admirable 
ofificial  portrait.  A  half-length,  possibly  a  study  for  the  larger 
picture,  but  more  probably  a  replica,  now  hangs  in  Hertford  House, 
and  holds  its  own  well,  even  amidst  the  splendors  of  the  Wallace 
collection. 


CHAPTER    IX 

RISE    OF    A    NATI\"E    SCHOOL 

Social  Conditions  in  America  in  the  Early  Part  of  the  Nineteenth  Century.  — 
Ueyelopment  of  the  West.  —  Early  Lifk  of  Chester  Harding.  —  Success  in 
London  and  Boston.  —  Francis  Alexander.  —  Alvan  Fisher. — John  Neagle. — 
Henry  Inman 

The  period  between  the  War  of  1812  and  the  beginnings  of  the 
RebelHon  was  a  time  of  profound  social  change  in  America.  Its 
history  is  to  the  average  man  a  blank.  The  Mexican  War  was  too 
short  and  too  one-sided  to  persist  in  the  popular  imagination  after 
the  more  stirring  times  of  the  struggle  against  slaver3%  and  apart 
from  the  Mexican  W^ar  there  were  no  picturesque  incidents.  It  was 
a  time  of  legal  definition  and  interpretation  of  the  new^  plan  of 
government,  of  new,  independent  development  of  the  land,  of  prac- 
tical working  out  of  certain  theories  of  the  relations  of  man  to  man 
enunciated  with  conviction  in  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  but 
never  before  put  in  actual  practice. 

The  first  manifest  effect  was  a  falling  off  in  the  dignity  and 
graces  of  life  among  the  political  and  intellectual  leaders  of  the 
community.  At  the  time  of  the  Revolution  there  was  a  continuous 
line  of  cities  along  the  Atlantic  coast  from  Charleston  to  Boston, 
in  constant  communication  witli  the  mother  country,  and  where  the 
visitor  of  position  from  Knghmd  or  France  was  received,  if  with 
more  modest  surroundings,  yet  with  a  certain  state  and  with  no 
less  dignity  and  courtesy  than  he  had  been  accustomed  to,  and  the 
people  of  importance  whom  he  met  were  personally  in  touch  with 
the  circle  which  he  had  known  at  home.  He  talked  with  them  as 
with  his  equals,  and  to  tlie  great  leaders  of  the  Revolution  he  looked 
up  with  respect  and  reverence.  But  th(.'  generation  that  succeeded 
Washington  and  Franklin,  Jefferson  and  Hamilton,  saw  no  states- 
men that  equalled  them  either  in  capacity  or  in  culture.  If  an 
apologist  for  the  later  day  should  insist  on  the  alDilities  of  men   like 

160 


FIG.    34. —  HARDING:    JOHN    RANDOLPH    OF    ROANOKE,    CORCORAN    GALLERY, 

WASHINGTON. 


RISE    OF   A    NATIVK    SCHOOL  1 63 

Webster  and  Clay,  it  may  be  pointed  out  that  those  men,  great  as 
tliey  were  (and  Webster  was  probably  the  equal  mentally  of  any 
man  the  continent  has  seen),  were  yet  provincial  ;  their  manners 
were  pompous  when  they  were  not  uncouth,  their  time  was  taken 
u])  with  petty  personal  squabbles,  they  had  no  profound  culture, 
their  point  of  view  was  limited,  and  they  could  not  see  life  sanely 
and  see  it  whole  with  the  high  philosophy  of  their  predecessors. 

It  may  well  be  argued  that  the  slavery  question  itself  would  have 
been  settled  justly  and  peacefully  if  it  had  been  in  the  hands  of 
statesmen  with  the  calm,  shrewd  wisdom  of  Franklin  and  his  circle, 
and  also  w'ith  their  authority  over  the  decisions  of  the  community. 
But  this  last  consideration  brings  up  another  prominent  feature  of 
the  change,  —  the  growth  of  democracy  and  the  distrust  of  aristo- 
cratic tendencies.  In  colonial  times,  every  city  felt  the  influence  of 
the  English  court,  sometimes  advantageously,  sometimes  not,  but 
always  very  decidedly.  Trade,  navigation,  boundaries  of  provinces, 
wars  with  the  Indians,  religious  tolerance,  all  were  regulated  more  or 
less  by  royal  decree,  and  to  carry  out  the  royal  will  there  came  a  con- 
tinuous succession  of  commissioners  and  governors,  soldiers  and 
divines,  who  were  supported  or  opposed  by  men  of  approximately  their 
own  rank  and  education  among  the  colonists,  and  who  thus  formed  a 
governing  caste  almost  as  much  above  the  laborer  as  those  in  Europe. 
This  could  not  endure.  The  theory  of  the  equality  of  all  free-born 
men  was  set  forth  in  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  and  the 
physical  conditions  of  the  time  forced  it  into  practice. 

Immigration  into  the  country  diminished  greatly  at  the  beginning 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  but  the  colonists  were  a  prolific  race,  and 
their  ample  families  soon  outgrew  the  narrow  strip  along  the  seacoast ; 
they  struck  into  the  interior,  into  western  New^  York  and  Pennsyl- 
vania, and  beyond  into  the  region  back  of  the  Alleghanies,  w^here  they 
found  a  soil  more  fertile  than  rocky  New  England,  unlimited  in  quan- 
tity and  unrestricted  by  any  royal  grants  or  special  privileges.  Each 
man  took  what  land  he  could  employ,  and  the  vicissitudes  and  hard- 
ships of  frontier  life  soon  destroyed  any  pride  of  birth.  Even  on  the 
coast  the  diminished  social  intercourse  with  the  Old  World,  the  fading 
away  of  the  old  ideals,  the  general  turning  to  the  material  develop- 
ment of  the  country,  and  the  pursuit  of  wealth  had  weakened  the 


1 64  HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    rAINTIXG 

amenities  of  life ;  but  in  the  settlements,  in  the  backwoods  of  Ohio  or 
Indiana,  the  last  vestiges  almost  disappeared.  The  dwellings  were 
isolated,  the  roads  almost  impassable,  the  struggle  for  existence  severe, 
and  though  a  few  books  had  been  brought  out  in  the  scanty  baggage, 
and  though  itinerant  preachers  still  did  something  for  faith  and 
morals,  life  was  harsli  and  often  squalid.  Later,  when  towns  and 
cities  rose  on  the  great  rivers,  they  reflected  the  social  life  of  the 
backwoods,  and  not  of  the  East  from  which  the  settlers  came.  This 
was  the  time  when  the  English  travellers  visited  us  and  wrote 
books  on  our  manners  and  customs,  the  memory  whereof  has  hardly 
ceased  to  rankle  to  this  day.  And  yet  for  the  most  part  they  told 
the  truth,  or  as  near  it  as  they  could  get,  in  all  sincerity:  the 
uncouth  manners,  the  narrow-mindedness,  the  shirt  sleeves,  the 
squalor,  and  the  tobacco  juice  were  all  there.  The  tourists  could 
not  see  all  of  the  energy,  the  practical  wisdom,  the  infinite  kindli- 
ness and  helpfulness,  the  high  ideals,  that  lay  beneath  the  surface. 
They  recognized  somewhat  of  this  and  gave  praise,  but  it  was  not 
enough.  The  Westerner  cared  nothing  for  the  coarseness  of  the 
environment  in  which  he  had  been  brought  up,  but  he  saw  with 
the  eye  of  a  prophet  the  enormous  future  development  of  the 
country.  It  was  inevitable,  it  could  not  fail  to  be,  and  he  boasted 
with  unabashed  spread-eagleism  of  the  greatest  nation  in  all  crea- 
tion wliose  meanest  citizen  was  a  sovereign  in  his  own  right.  It 
was  largely  this  which  stirred  a  vague  hostility  in  our  visitors,  for 
it  was  the  time  of  reaction  against  the  ideas  of  the  Erench  Revo- 
lution, and  that  the  state  should  in  no  way  by  special  laws  recog- 
nize religion  nor  protect  tlie  learned,  the  wealthy,  and  the  well-born 
against  the  ignorant  or  vicious  was  believed  to  lead  direct  to  atheism, 
anarchy,  and  the  reign  of  terror. 

This  development  of  the  West,  it  has  been  neccssar)'  to  recall  in 
order  to  explain  the  changing  conditions  of  art,  for  the  same  demo- 
cratic influence  applied  to  the  remoter  parts  of  New  England  and 
later  to  the  cities  themsehes.  In  spite  of  the  increasing  wealth  and 
})opu]ation  of  the  country,  most  of  the  painters  who  succeeded  Jarvis 
and  Sully  grew  up  in  surroundings  much  harsher  and  averse  to  the 
muses  than  the  early  colonial  society  that  West  and  Copley,  Stuart 
and  Allston,  knew.     There  was  no  sharp  dividing  line.     The  older 


risp:  of  a  native  school 


165 


men  trained  by  West  or  through  his  example  worked  side  by  side 
with  their  younger  confreres,  and  even  in  some  cases  outliv^ed  them, 
but  the  spirit  of  the  new  generation  was  different.  One  of  the  best 
of  them  in  his  old  age  wrote  out  for  his  children  the  story  of  his  life 
with  a  charming  sincerity  and  humor,  and  the  career  described  in  his 
Egistography  by  Chester  Harding  is  almost  as  curious  as  that  of 
West. 

Harding  was  born  in  Conway,  Massachusetts,  in  1792  ;  but  when 
he  was  fourteen  his  father  moved  with  his  family  into  Madison  County 
in  western  New  York,  then  an  unbroken  wilderness.  The  boy  was  of 
splendid  physique,  over  six  feet  three  in  his  stockings  (when  he  wore 
any),  and  throve  under  the  hardships  of  frontier  life.  His  strength 
was  prodigious,  he  was  renowned  as  an  axe-man  and  in  all  the 
labors  of  the  pioneer.  He  even  tried  soldiering  and  marched  as  a 
drummer  with  the  militia  to  the  St.  Lawrence  in  181 3;  but  getting 
no  nearer  to  the  enemy  than  the  breadth  of  the  river,  his  company 
inflicted  no  damage  save  upon  the  chicken  coops  of  their  country- 
men. Happening  to  fall  behind  on  the  march,  he  and  a  companion 
asked  how  they  could  regain  the  troops,  and  were  told  by  an  old 
woman  to  "follow  the  feathers."  The  soldiering  would  have  been 
ludicrous  were  it  not  for  the  ravages  of  disease  in  the  camp.  Many 
perished  of  dysentery,  and  Harding  almost  died  of  the  disease  and  of 
subsequent  exposure. 

When  he  came  of  age  he  attempted  various  pursuits,  including 
chair-making,  peddling,  and  keeping  a  tavern,  which  last  got  him 
so  deeply  into  debt  that  to  avoid  his  creditors,  imprisonment  for 
debt  being  still  in  force,  he  left  his  wife  and  child  with  his  parents 
(for  he  was  already  married)  and  struck  through  the  woods  for  the 
Allegheny  River,  down  which  he  floated  on  a  raft  to  Pittsburg. 
There  he  earned  a  little  money  as  a  house  painter  and  went  back 
for  his  family,  returning  with  them  to  Pittsburg,  where  he  set  up 
as  a  sign  painter  and  worked  away  for  a  time  until  the  sight  of 
some  heads  by  an  itinerant  painter  of  the  name  of  Nelson  filled  him 
with  amazement.  He  engaged  him  to  paint  his  wife  and  himself, 
though  the  ungenerous  artist  would  not  allow  him  to  see  how  the 
painting  was  done  or  give  him  any  information.  Yet  his  ambition 
was  aroused,  and  getting  a  board,  with  his  sign  painter's  materials 


l66  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

he  attempted  a  portrait  of  his  wife.  "  I  made  a  thing  that  looked 
like  her.  The  moment  I  saw  the  likeness  I  became  frantic  with 
delight:  it  was  like  the  discovery  of  a  new  sense;  I  could  think 
of  nothing  else."  From  that  time  sign  painting  became  odious 
and  was  neglected.  He  painted  ten  or  a  dozen  heads  in  which 
some  likeness  to  the  original  could  be  seen  and  then  started  for 
Paris,  Kentucky,  where  he  boldly  announced  himself  as  a  portrait 
painter,  and  where  in  six  months  he  painted  nearly  a  hundred  heads 
at  twenty-five  dollars  each.  Being  thus  in  funds  he  went  to  Phila- 
delphia, where  he  drew  industriously  in  the  Academy  and  also  saw 
some  good  pictures,  which  discouraged  him  mightily  with  his  pre- 
vious productions. 

After  two  months  of  study  he  returned  to  Kentucky  and  finding 
no  demands  for  art  there  wandered  with  his  family  to  Cincinnati, 
Louisville,  St.  Louis,  wherever  business  promised  to  be  remunera- 
tive. He  even  made  a  trip  of  a  hundred  miles  to  paint  a  head 
of  old  Daniel  Boone,  then  a  man  of  ninety,  still  living  the  primitive 
life  of  the  backwoodsman,  surrounded  by  an  enormous  progeny, 
but  hardly  known  by  name  or  reputation  to  his  immediate  neigh- 
bors. Finally  he  returned  to  his  parents  in  western  New  York 
and  astonished  his  neighbors  no  more  by  the  paying  of  his  debts 
than  by  the  art  which  enabled  him  to  do  so ;  and  his  aged  grand- 
father felt  obliged  to  call  him  aside  and  say :  "  Chester,  I  want 
to  speak  to  you  about  your  present  mode  of  life.  I  think  it  very 
little  better  than  swindling  to  charge  forty  dollars  for  one  of 
those  efhgies.  Now  I  want  you  to  give  up  this  course  of  living 
and  settle  down  on  a  farm  and  become  a  respectable  man."  But 
Harding  had  gone  too  far  to  take  this  excellent  advice.  He  had 
determined  to  go  to  England  to  study,  and  even  had  his  trunk 
j)acked  when  his  mother  pointed  out  the  precarious  position  in 
which  he  would  leave  his  family  should  anything  happen  to  him 
when  abroad.  Recognizing  the  justice  of  this,  he  promptly  put 
off  his  trip,  bought  a  farm,  ordered  a  house  built,  and  set  off  for 
Washington  to  raise  money  to  pay  for  them.  There  he  painted 
busily  during  the  winter,  and  in  the  summer  went  to  Pittsfield  and 
Northampton,  Massachusetts,  where  he  was  so  successful  that 
some  gendemen  from  Boston  advised  him  to  go  to  that  city.     He 


FIG.    35. —HARDING:     MRS.    DANIEL    WEBSTER,    OWNED    BV   MRS.    REGINALD 

FOSTER,   BOSTON. 


RISE   OF   A   NATIVE   SCHOOL  1 69 

went  and  "  for  six  months  rode  triumphantly  on  tlie  top  wave  of 
fortune."  He  had  much  more  work  than  he  could  do.  "  I  do  not 
think  that  any  artist  in  this  country  ever  enjoyed  more  popularity 
than  I  did  ;  but  popularity  is  often  easily  won,  and  as  easily  lost. 
Mr.  Stuart,  the  greatest  portrait  painter  this  country  ever  produced, 
was  at  that  time  in  his  manhood's  strength  as  a  painter;  yet  he 
was  idle  half  the  winter.  He  would  ask  of  his  friends,  '  How 
rages  the   Harding  fever?'" 

His  popularity  was  unabated,  but  he  was  determined  to  go  to 
Europe.  The  farm  was  paid  for  and  he  had  $1600  besides.  He 
stopped  again  to  bring  his  family  to  Northampton  instead  of  leaving 
them  on  the  farm,  so  that  his  children  might  not  run  wild  and 
deteriorate  while  he  was  mingling  with  a  better  class  of  society 
and  developing,  and  then  sailed  in  the  autumn  of   1823. 

He  w^ent  to  England  to  learn,  but  to  learn  not  as  a  student  but 
as  a  practitioner,  and  he  was  successful  beyond  anything  that  could 
be  anticipated.  It  was  largely  owing  to  his  personal  charm  and 
the  interest  that  he  aroused.  The  huge  backwoodsman  when 
he  began  to  paint  portraits  was  about  as  uneducated  as  it  is  possible 
for  a  man  to  be.  When  a  boy  he  had  learned  to  spell  out  the 
Bible  with  difficulty,  and  that  was  the  only  book  that  he  knew  until 
in  Pittsburg  his  wife  brought  to  the  house  TAe  Children  of  the 
Abbey,  the  old  romantic  novel  by  Regina  Roche.  Harding  had  been 
brought  up  to  consider  novel  reading  sinful,  or  at  least  unprofitable ; 
but  when  his  wife  read  him  a  chapter,  he  demanded  another,  grew 
interested  in  the  plot,  and  finished  by  keeping  her  reading  all  night 
until  the  volume  was  finished.  His  scruples  against  novel  reading 
disappeared,  and  he  plunged  unrestrained  into  the  delights  of  Walter 
Scott.  His  first  book  he  could  not  read  understandingly  without 
pronouncing  the  words  aloud,  and  he  confesses  that  even  to  the  end 
of  his  life  he  often  caught  himself  whispering  the  words  of  a  book 
or  newspaper.  It  was  some  time  before  he  realized  that  it  was  con- 
sidered more  dignified  to  paint  heads  than  houses,  and  the  entrance 
into  polite  society  filled  him  with  terrors  unknow^n  before.  His 
experience  in  Washington  and  Boston  had  given  him  more  confi- 
dence, and  in  England  he  painted  royal  dukes  and  visited  in  the 
country  places  of  the  nobility  without  too  much   uneasiness.     For 


170  HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

he  was  really  liked;  his  simplicity  appealed  to  his  hosts,  and  in  later 
years  N.  P.  Willis  found  his  best  introduction  in  England  was  as 
"the  young  friend  of   Harding,  the  artist." 

His  prospects  were  so  bright  that  his  family  joined  him  in  1S25  ; 
but  a  period  of  financial  depression  set  in,  and  that  together  with  a 
dislike  to  bringing  up  his  family  under  the  social  conditions  of  Eng- 
land, where  his  profession  enabled  him  to  be  received  in  circles  in 
w^hich  his  wife  and  children  would  not  be  recognized,  caused  him  to 
return  to  America  the  next  year.  He  never  went  abroad  again,  but 
passed  the  rest  of  his  life  in  different  cities  of  the  United  States  as 
his  profession  called  him,  but  his  house  and  home  were  in  Boston. 
He  painted  most  of  the  political  leaders  of  the  country,  —  Webster, 
Clay,  Calhoun,  Marshall  ;  and  as  Colonel  Boone  had  been  one  of  his 
first  sitters,  so  General  Sherman  was  his  last. 

Harding's  career  seems  remarkable  to-day,  but  it  was  in  no  way 
unique.  Of  his  development  we  have  a  picturesque  record,  but 
many  of  his  contemporaries  went  through  similar  experiences. 
Francis  Alexander's  youth,  for  instance,  was  much  the  same.  Born 
in  Windham  County,  Connecticut,  in  1800,  eight  years  after  Harding, 
he  worked  on  his  father's  farm  in  the  sunimer  and  went  to  the  dis- 
trict school  in  winter  —  as  a  pupil  until  he  was  eighteen  and  then  for 
two  years  as  a  master,  when,  as  he  says,  "  I  taught  the  small  fry  under 
my  charge,  the  bad  pronunciation  and  bad  reading  which  I  had 
imbibed  from  my  old  schoolmasters,  and  which  I  have  found  so  diffi- 
cult to  unlearn  since."  The  next  summer  he  wore  himself  out  so  by 
his  labors  at  haying  and  reaping  that  he  was  forced  to  rest  and  very 
wisely  w^ent  fishing.  The  beauty  of  the  pickerel  and  perch  that  he 
caught  reminded  him  of  a  shilling  box  of  water-colors,  "such  as  chil- 
dren use,"  which  had  been  left  him  by  a  boy.  He  produced  a  picture 
of  the  fish  that  filled  all  beholders,  including  himself,  with  amazement 
and  delight.  He  had  always  drawn  in  school  on  his  slate  or  on  scraps 
of  paper,  but  now  he  painted  from  nature,  fiowers,  dead  birds,  and  the 
like,  and  with  such  success  that  he  determined  to  abandon  farming 
for  sign  painting,  which  he  thought  would  be  more  remunerative,  and 
which  was  the  highest  form   of  art  of  which   he  had  any  conception. 

He  had  heard  from  a  book  pedler  of  New  York  as  the  chief 
home  of  the  arts,  and  went  there  to  perfect  himself.     He  finally  \vas 


RISE    OF   A   NATIVE   SCHOOL  171 

introduced  to  Alexander  Robertson,  the  Secretary  of  the  Academy 
of  Fine  Arts,  and  given  some  models  to  copy  in  pencil.  Finally, 
on  his  insistence,  he  was  permitted  to  copy  in  oil  "  two  or  three 
first  lessons  for  girls,  such  as  a  mountain  or  lake,  very  simple  "  ;  but 
was  told  that  he  could  not  attempt  heads  or  figures  until  he  had 
been  there  some  months.  As  a  five  or  six  weeks'  stay  had  exhausted 
his  funds,  he  returned  to  the  farm  and  there  decorated  the  white- 
washed walls  of  a  room  with  rude  landscapes  filled  with  catde, 
horses,  sheep,  hogs,  hens,  and  chickens. 

Again  the  beholders  were  amazed,  but  no  one  desired  similar 
decorations  or  any  form  of  landscape ;  so  Alexander  painted  a  head 
on  a  lid  from  an  old  chest.  While  in  New  York  he  had  had  access  to 
the  gallery  over  the  schoolroom  of  the  Academy,  and  now  his  only 
idea  was  to  produce  something  which  should  be  like  the  portraits 
he  had  seen  there.  The  head  was  a  success  and  aroused  not  only 
wonder  but  approval.  He  painted  heads  of  two  young  nephews  on 
pieces  of  board  that  were  pronounced  excellent  Hkenesses.  His 
"fame  had  now  spread  half  a  mile  in  one  direction."  The  paying 
patron  appeared  and  offered  five  dollars  for  a  full-length  portrait  of  a 
child ;  other  orders  followed  until  he  had  earned  fifty  or  sixty  dollars 
when  he  started  again  for  New  York,  this  time  with  the  intention 
of  learning  portrait  painting.  Systematic  instruction  he  could  not 
obtain ;  but  an  old  gentleman  gave  him  Stuart's  mode  of  setting  the 
palette,  and  Trumbull  and  Waldo  and  Jewett  treated  him  with  kind- 
ness and  gave  him  portraits  to  copy.  When  his  funds  were  exhausted, 
he  returned  to  Connecticut  and  travelled  from  town  to  town,  getting 
eight  dollars  for  a  head  until  he  reached  Providence,  where  he  was 
so  successful  that  he  stayed  there  over  two  years,  raising  his  price  to 
fifteen  and  finally  to  twenty-five  dollars.  Encouraged  by  this,  he 
came  to  Boston  and  presented  to  Stuart  a  letter  of  introduction  that 
Trumbull  had  given  him,  at  the  same  time  showing  him  a  portrait  of 
two  sisters  which  he  had  brought  with  him.  The  old  painter  "  said 
that  they  were  very  clever,  that  they  reminded  him  of  Gainsborough's 
pictures,  that  I  lacked  many  things  that  might  be  acquired  by  prac- 
tice and  study,  but  that  I  had  that  which  could  not  be  acquired." 

Stuart  invited  Alexander  to  settle  in  Boston  as  a  portrait  painter; 
which  he  did  and  was  successful,  raising  his  prices  to  forty,  fifty  and 


172  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAIN  riNG 

seventy-five  dollars,  and  his  vogue  continued  unabated  until  be  sailed 
for  Italy  in  1S31.  Tbere  be  visited  most  of  tbe  larger  cities  and  spent 
two  winters  in  Rome,  part  of  tbe  time  witb  Tbomas  Cole,  and  after 
two  years  returned  to  Boston  to  continue  bis  portrait  painting  at 
increased  rates.  In  1S33,  soon  after  bis  return,  be,  witb  Harding, 
Fisber,  and  Dougbty,  opened  a  joint  e.\bibitit)n  of  tbeir  works  in 
Boston,  wbicb  was  extremely  successful  and  whicb  brougbt  tbem 
reputation  and  some  profit.  Tbey  were  all  about  tbe  same  age 
and  of  mucb  tbe  same  type  of  character  and  upbringing.  But  tbe 
development  of  Alexander's  personality  was  different  from  tbat  of 
tbe  others,  and  rather  amusing.  He  was  known  at  one  time  as 
the  art  jockey  from  tbe  Yankee  persistency  and  skill  witb  whicb 
be  obtained  orders  and  advanced  bis  fortunes.  On  Charles  Dickens's 
first  voyage  to  America,  in  1842,  while  still  out  of  sight  of  land,  be- 
hind the  pilot  who  boarded  tbe  ship  appeared  Alexander  and  begged 
tbe  privilege  of  painting  bis  portrait.  Dickens,  who  bad  not  as  a 
rule  much  appreciation  of  the  humor  of  such  situations,  w'as  enough 
amused  at  bis  enterprise  to  consent,  and  sat  for  him  in  bis  studio, 
whicb  was  thronged  witb  the  elite  of  Boston,  come  to  pay  their 
respects  to  tbe  great  author.  Later,  however,  after  Alexander's  trips 
abroad,  the  crudeness  of  his  native  land  became  unbearable  to  him. 
He  settled  in  Italy  and,  though  be  planned  to  return,  he  finally  died 
there  in    18S1. 

Doughty  was  a  landscapist  and  will  be  mentioned  later  as  one  of 
the  founders  of  the  American  school.  Alvan  Fisher  was  mainly  a  por- 
trait painter,  though  be  worked  in  many  departments.  Like  Harding 
and  Alexander  and  many  of  his  contemporaries,  he  was  brought  up 
where  be  could  see  no  w^orks  of  art  of  any  degree  of  merit,  and 
worked  away  as  a  clerk  in  a  country  store  until  lie  was  over  eighteen, 
decoratiniT  the  marcjins  of  tbe  account  books  until  "  thev  resembled 
tbe  old  illuminated  manuscripts."  Then  he  determined  to  be  an 
artist,  and,  less  fortunate  than  the  others,  was  placed  for  two  years 
with  an  excellent  ornamental  painter  from  whom  he  acquired  a  style 
of  work  whicb  it  took  him  many  years  to  shake  off.  In  18 14,  when 
twenty-two,  be  began  to  paint  the  usual  cheap  portrait  heads,  but 
soon  found  a  demand  for  rural  scenes  with  cattle,  portraits  of  animals, 
winter  scenes  and  the  like,  and  alternated  these  with  bis  likenesses. 


FIG.    :i6.— ALEXANDER:    MRS.   FLETCHER   WEBSTER,    BOSTON   MUSEUM. 


J    ! 


RISE    OF   A    NA'riVE    SCHOOL 


175 


He  travelled  in  Europe  in  1825  and  in  Paris  studied  in  a  life-class 
and  copied  at  the  Louvre.  After  his  return  he  became  one  of  the 
Massachusetts  group  of  painters  working  chiefly  at  portraits,  though 
producing  some  pieces  oi  genre. 

These  men  formed  what  might  be  called  the  Boston  group. 
Others  of  the  same  age  and  approximately  the  same  skill  belonged 
rather  to  Philadelphia  or  New  York,  though  it  cannot  be  too  often 
repeated  that  portrait  painting  in  America  was  still  a  vagrant  trade, 
its  practitioners  wandering  from  city  to  city  as  they  saw  a  chance  of 
employment. 

John  Neagle  should  be  credited  to  Philadelphia,  though  he  was 
born  in  Boston  (in  1799),  his  parents  being  there  on  a  visit;  but 
soon  returning  to  the  former  city,  the  boy  saw  more  of  art  than 
Harding  or  Alexander  and  began  to  paint  earlier.  Even  at  school 
he  had  for  a  friend  Edward  F.  Petticolas,  who  was  enough  his  senior 
to  take  the  lead  in  their  boyish  drawing,  and  who  received  later  some 
instruction  from  Sully  in  miniature  painting,  then  began  to  paint 
portraits  in  oil,  visited  Europe  several  times,  and  finally  settled  in 
Richmond  and  there  continued  his  work  with  moderate  success. 
"  There  was  a  modest  manner  in  the  artist,  and  rather  a  want  of 
boldness  in  his  work,"  says  Dunlap,  who,  nevertheless,  speaks  kindly 
of  both.  Neagle,  when  he  got  out  of  school,  was  apprenticed  at  the 
age  of  fourteen  for  five  years  and  four  months  to  a  coach  and  orna- 
mental painter,  Thomas  Wilson ;  but  the  coach  painter  had  ambition 
and  took  lessons  of  Bass  Otis,  who  from  being  a  scythe-maker  had 
become  a  portrait  painter,  and  who  was  at  one  time  in  a  sort  of  part- 
nership with  Jarvis.  Neagle  thus  had  access  to  Otis,  and  applied 
himself  day  and  night,  when  not  employed  by  his  master,  in  drawing 
and  painting  "in  his  own  way."  The  increasing  skill  of  the  appren- 
tice was  of  value  to  his  master,  wdio  arranged  that  he  should  have  a 
couple  of  months'  instruction  from  Otis,  which  was  all  the  regular 
teaching  that  he  ever  had.  But  there  were  some  good  pictures  to  be 
seen  in  Philadelphia,  and  some  good  painters  willing  to  advise,  and 
his  lot  was  very  different  from  that  of  the  backwoods  aspirants.  He 
was  praised  by  Krimmel,  a  German  who  painted  miniatures  and  gave 
drawing  lessons,  and  whose  picture  of  Centre  Square  with  a  crowd 
of  figures  in  the  costumes  of  the  time  is  in  the  Philadelphia  Acad- 


176  HISTORY    OF    AM1-:RK:AX    PAIXTLXG 

emy.  He  was  a  favorite  with  C.  \V.  Peale,  and  Otis  took  him  to 
see  Sully,  who  was  polite  but  formal,  and  who  assured  him  that  "  the 
arts  did  not  point  the  way  to  fortune  and  that,  had  he  been  a  mer- 
chant with  the  same  perseverance  wliich  had  characterized  his  efforts 
in  art  he  might  have  realized  a  fortune." 

When  Neagle  finished  his  apprenticeship  in  18 18,  he  was  in 
his  nineteenth  year  and  had  already  painted  portraits  that  were 
sood  likenesses  and  admired.  He  thouirht  that  there  micrht  be  a 
chance  for  him  in  some  of  the  primitive  towns  farther  west  and 
travelled  across  the  mountains  to  Lexington,  Kentucky.  He 
asked  at  once  if  there  was  any  portrait  painter  there,  and  was 
amazed  to  find  that  there  were  two.  The  first  one  that  he  visited 
was  Matthew  Jouett,  and  he  recognized  him  as  a  better  artist  than 
himself.  Jouett  was  a  Kentuckian  by  birth,  ''a  tasteful,  humorous 
man,"  and  a  well-trained  artist.  Just  before  this  time  he  had  been 
in  Boston  studvino-  under  Stuart,  and  he  stained  somethino-  of  the 
style,  not  so  much  of  Stuart,  as  of  his  English  contemporaries.  He 
painted  through  all  the  country  from  Kentucky  to  the  Gulf  and  was 
recognized  as  the  best  painter  "west  of  the  Mountains.'  Born  in 
1783,  he  was  an  older  man  than  Neagle,  and  the  latter,  feeling  that 
it  was  useless  to  compete  with  him,  continued  on  to  New  Orleans, 
finding  no  demand  for  his  services  anywhere  and  only  succeeding  with 
diflficultv  in  raising  enough  money  to  pay  his  passage  by  ship  back  to 
Philadelphia.  If  the  journey  seems  long  and  useless,  it  may  be  worth 
while  to  recall  that  in  those  days  it  was  easier  though  longer  to  go 
from  Lexington  to  Philadelphia  by  way  of  New  Orleans  than  by 
land.     Road  travel  over  the  mountains  involved  great  hardship. 

Back  in  Philadelphia,  Neagle  found  the  success  denied  him  on 
his  travels.  He  was  employed  steadily,  married  a  stepdaughter  of 
Sully,  and  settled  to  the  study  and  })ractice  of  his  profession.  A 
l^ortrait  that  he  painted  in  1S26  of  Pat  Lyons,  a  blacksmith,  estab- 
lished his  fame  and  was  exhibited  not  only  in  Philadelphia  but  also 
in  New  York.  Pat  was  a  good  deal  of  a  character,  skilled  at  his 
craft  and  had  become  rich  by  it.  One  of  the  stories  abcnit  him  is 
that  a  man  who  had  l^ought  from  him  an  iron  chest  with  a  compli- 
cated lock  lost  the  kcv  and  sent  for  Pat,  who  with  his  tools  readily 
picked  the  lock  and  raised  the  lid  with,   one   hand  while  he  extended 


FIG.    37._NEAGLE:    PAT   LYONS   THE   BLACKSMI  I'H,   PENNSYLVANIA   ACADEMY. 


RISE   OF   A   NATIVE    SCHOOL  179 

tlie  other  with  a  demand  for  ten  dollars.  This  was  refused,  where- 
upon he  promptly  dropped  the  lid,  and  the  spring  lock  held  the 
treasure  as  securely  as  before.  The  owner  was  compelled  to  send 
for  him  again,  but  when  the  lid  was  up  a  second  time  Pat  de- 
manded twenty  dollars,  which  was  paid  without  demur.  Neagle 
went  to  Boston  and  there  visited  Stuart,  had  the  advantas;e  of  his 
counsels,  and  painted  the  best  portrait  of  him  which  exists,  and 
also  saw  Allston,  who  complimented  him  on  his  work ;  but  he 
lived  mainly  near  or  in  Philadelphia  and  was  known  as  a  Philadel- 
phia painter.  He  was  at  one  time  a  director  in  the  Pennsylvania 
Academy  of  the  Fine  Arts. 

These  men  whose  lives  have  been  outlined  in  this  chapter  were 
representative  of  the  time  and  the  best  of  its  artists.  From  them 
others  of  similar  type  descended  to  all  grades  of  inferiority. 
Whether  the  work  of  those  set  forth  as  leaders  is  to  be  considered 
good  or  bad  depends  on  the  standard  of  comparison.  It  has  none 
of  the  grotesque  incompetence  of  the  early  colonials  nor  the  painful 
accuracy  of  the  later  ones.  The  great  number  of  portraits  turned 
out  gave  to  the  artists  facility  and  boldness,  while  directly  or 
indirectly  they  learned  of  the  men  trained  under  West  how  to  set 
a  palette  and  sound  technical  methods,  but  their  work  as  a  whole 
is  deadly  uninteresting.  Its  very  competence  condemns  it.  They 
did  completely  what  they  tried  to  do,  and  except  occasionally  there 
is  no  grace,  no  nobility,  no  decorative  feeling  or  beauty  of  handling, 
but  instead  a  petty  insistence  on  every  trivial  detail.  Neagle  tried 
for  a  larger,  more  striking  effect,  owing  probably  to  his  relations  with 
Sully,  whose  tendency  was  also  in  that  direction.  He  forced  up 
masses  of  white,  like  a  waistcoat  or  shawl,  against  a  dark  shadow  to 
obtain  a  striking  effect  somewhat  in  the  style  of  Lawrence,  but  the 
effect  is  often  unconvincing  and  flashy.  Harding  was  more  sincere. 
His  heads  are  as  solid  as  iron  and  his  coats  as  uncompromising  as 
tin,  while  his  faces  shine  with  bright  lights  touched  into  the  eyes 
and  on  the  forehead.  Alexander  shows  the  effect  of  his  Italian 
study  and  long  residence  abroad  in  more  grace  and  in  a  smoother 
handling  and  a  softer,  more  pleasing  color. 

To  these  men  should  be  added  Inman,  although  he  was  not  ex- 
clusively a  portrait  painter  and  belonged  by  his  associations  to  a  later 


l8o  HISTORY    OF    AMI:R1CAN    PAINTINO 

development.  Henry  Inman  (born  in  1801)  has  already  appeared 
as  an  apprentice  of  Jarvis,  an  experience  which  gave  him  a  solid 
training  in  art  and  much  picturesque  e.\j)erience  of  life,  travelling 
with  his  master  over  the  whole  country  from  Boston  to  New 
Orleans.  Later  he  used  to  recount  with  zest  the  incidents  of  this 
time.  When  his  apprenticeship  with  Jarvis  was  out,  he  began 
painting  on  his  own  account,  making  New  York  his  headquarters 
and  entered  into  the  artist  life  there.  He  joined  the  association  of 
artists  for  drawing,  and  when  this  led  to  the  founding  of  the 
Academy  of  Design,  he  was  elected  the  first  vice-president  and 
retained  the  ofifice  until  he  removed  to  Philadelphia  in  1832. 
There  his  success  continued  until  his  income  in  183S  amounted 
to  nearly  $9000,  but  soon  after  the  tide  turned.  His  health, 
always  delicate,  began  to  fail ;  he  made  unfortunate  invest- 
ments ;  his  work  declined.  He  removed  to  New  York  and  enjoyed 
again  the  society  of  his  old  friends;  but  lack  of  work,  the  cares  of  a 
large  family,  and  repeated  and  severe  attacks  of  asthma  threw  him 
into  deep  dejection.  His  friends  helped  him  as  they  could,  and 
finally  James  Lenox,  Edward  L.  Carey,  and  Henry  Reed  induced 
him  to  visit  England  and  portray  Chalmers,  Macaulay,  and  Words- 
worth for  them  respectively,  hoping  that  the  change  of  air  might 
benefit  him.  The  expedient  was  a  happy  one.  He  thoroughly 
enjoyed  the  artistic  circle  to  which  his  congenial  disposition  made 
him  welcome.  He  was  successful  with  his  portraits  except  in  a 
single  case.  He  had  received  a  commission  to  paint  a  Lord  Cod- 
ringham.  The  Lord  Chancellor  at  the  time  was  Cottenham,  and 
Inman,  getting  the  names  confused,  asked  him  for  sittings.  The 
astonished  Lord  Chancellor  protested  that  he  knew  nothing  of  the 
o'entleman  who  wished  his  likeness.  "  But  he  knows  vou,"  cried 
Inman,"  and  is  a  most  prominent  and  respectable  citizen,"  and  such 
was  his  insistence  and  enthusiasm  that  Cottenham  ])osed  for  him  in 
full  costume,  w^ig,  robe,  and  the  rest.  The  portrait  was  one  of 
Inman's  best,  and  great  was  his  disappointment  when  it  was  throw^n 
on  his  hands  in  spite  of  the  similarity  of  names. 

He  succeeded  in  pleasing  his  other  sitters  so  well  that  in- 
ducements were  offered  him  to  settle  in  England  ;  but  his  family 
and   his   precarious   health  obliged   him   to  return    to   America,  and 


RISE   OF   A    NATIVE   SCHOOL  l8i 

a  few  months  after  he  died  of  heart  disease.  One  of  the  most 
touching  incidents  in  the  history  of  the  Academy  of  Design  is  the 
meeting  called  to  amend  the  constitution  so  that  assistance  could 
legally  be  given  to  the  family  of  deceased  members  from  the  funds 
of  the  society.  It  was  difficult  to  get  a  quorum  together,  and  there 
had  been  several  failures  from  that  cause.  Finally  a  desperate 
effort  was  made,  Miss  Hall,  the  only  lady  Academician  at  the  time, 
was  induced  to  come,  although  it  seems  to  have  been  considered 
an  extraordinary  act,  and  yet  one  was  lacking  to  a  quorum.  The 
meeting  accordingly  adjourned  to  Inman's  sick  room  so  that  he, 
on  his  death-bed,  made  up  the  number  necessary  to  pass  the 
resolutions   that  kept  his  family  from  destitution. 

Inman's  portrait  work  was  about  in  the  same  class  with  that  of 
Harding,  competent  but  commonplace,  more  likeness  than  char- 
acter in  the  heads,  and  the  door-mat  painted  with  the  same  insist- 
ence upon  all  the  facts  as  the  face.  His  work  was  very  unequal, 
but  that  applies  to  all  the  portrait  painters  of  the  time,  and  it  is 
hard  to  give  a  short  and  accurate  judgment  on  any  of  them.  Their 
productions  varied  greatly  according  to  the  conditions  under  which 
they  were  produced,  and  while  the  worst  are  hopeless,  all  of  the 
artists  have  at  times,  when  favored  by  fortune  and  a  congenial  sitter, 
produced  work  which  may  still  be  seen  with  pleasure.  Inman  had 
a  wider  scope  than  the  others  ;  he  painted  miniatures,  genre  scenes, 
and  also  landscapes  and  excelled  in  all.  But  these  branches  of  art 
are  for  a  later  chapter. 


CHAPTER  X 

NEW  YORK  BECOMES  THE  ART  CENTRE  OF  THE  COUNTRY 

New  York  takes  the  Lead  in  Wealth  and  Population.  —  The  American  Academy 
OF  Fine  Arts.  —  The  New  York  Drawing  Association.  —  Trumbull's  Charac- 
ter.—  Founding  of  the  National  Academy  of  Design.  —  Early  Struggles  and 
Successes.  —  Decline  of  the  American  Academy.  —  Social  Organization  of  the 
Artists.  —  The  Sketch  Club.  — The  Century  Association.  —  Early  Members  of 
the  Academy  of  Design.  —  Works  displayed 

The  men  described  in  the  previous  chapter,  with  the  exception 
of  Inman,  Hved  and  worked  but  Httle  in  New  York,  yet  it  was  dur- 
ing their  hves  that  the  development  of  New  York  City  as  the  princi- 
pal art  centre  of  the  country  took  place,  —  a  development  which  was 
slow,  but  which  is  the  principal  fact  in  the  history  of  American 
painting  in  the  second  quarter  of  the  century.  The  city  had  taken 
the  lead  in  population  early  in  the  nineteenth  century,  passing  Phila- 
delphia at  a  time  when  they  each  had  a  little  over  a  hundred  thou- 
sand inhabitants.  But  it  was  far  from  taking  an  equal  importance 
in  the  intellectual  life  of  the  community.  In  material  things  it  had 
ever  held  its  own :  men  ate  and  drank,  were  clothed  and  housed  as 
well  there  as  in  any  of  the  other  cities ;  but  the  things  of  the  spirit 
were  less  served.  As  early  as  1758  West  had  felt  unpleasantly  its 
busy  commercialism  as  compared  with  the  quiet,  refined,  and 
thoughtful  society  he  had  known  in  Philadelphia.  During  the 
Revolution  it  had  been  long  occupied  by  the  British,  and  both  the 
city  and  state  were  much  accused  of  lukewarmness,  indifference,  and 
Toryism,  though  when  listening  to  the  fervid  eulogiums  of  other 
states  uttered  by  favorite  sons,  it  is  permissible  for  the  New  Yorker 
to  recall  that  during  the  Revolution  his  state  honored  every  call 
upon  it  by  Congress  for  both  men  and  money. 

At  the  close  of  the  war  the  seat  of  the  government  was  soon 
removed  from  New  York  City  to  Philadelphia,  and  later  to  Wash- 
ington.     It   was   not  even   a  state   capital,  with   politicians  desiring 

182 


FIG.   38.  — INMAN:    MARTIN   VAN   BUREN,    METROPOLITAN   MUSEUM. 


NEW  YORK  BECOMES  THE  ART  CENTRE  185 

their  likenesses  handed  down  to  posterity,  and  the  artists  that  visited 
it,  after  exhausting  what  custom  they  could  get,  usually  went 
elsewhere  like  Stuart,  suffered  like  Vanderlyn,  or  simply  made  it 
headquarters  while  scouring  the  country  for  commissions.  Neverthe- 
less the  harbor  was  the  best  on  the  coast  and  the  merchants  were 
keen  and  enterprising.  The  population  more  than  doubled  with 
each  twenty  years,  and  the  city  swelled  in  wealth  and  importance. 
Finally  a  movement  was  made  in  the  direction  of  a  recognition  of 
the  arts,  but  later  than  in  the  other  large  cities. 

Philadelphia,  under  the  influence  of  Charles  Wilson  Peale,  had 
already  its  Academy  of  Fine  Arts,  which  had  been  preceded  by  the 
art  school  which  he  had  founded  with  the  aid  of  Ceracchi  the  sculp- 
tor, and  where,  for  the  want  of  a  better  model,  he  had  posed  himself. 
This  was  in  1791,  and  though  the  school  was  discontinued,  out  of 
it  grew  the  Columbianum,  under  whose  auspices  was  held,  in  1795, 
the  first  exhibition  of  paintings  in  Philadelphia.  The  Columbianum 
also  failed  after  a  few  years,  but  the  unwearied  Peale  still  persisted 
until,  in  1805,  the  Pennsylvania  Academy  was  founded,  and  the  next 
year  chartered.  Peale's  Museum,  with  its  portraits  and  natural  curi- 
osities, was  continued;  his  son  Rembrandt  had  started  a  similar 
museum  in  Baltimore;  Newport  had  had,  since  1750,  the  Redwood 
Library,  founded  by  Abraham  Redwood  and  enriched  by  various 
donations  of  pictures  and  books  ;  Boston  had  Pine's  Museum,  where 
Allston  got  some  inspiration  and  the  collection  of  portraits  belong- 
ing to  Harvard  College;  and  if  it  was  not  until  1826  that  the 
Athenaeum  opened  to  artists  a  room  with  plaster  casts  and  a  few 
portraits,  there  was  already  at  the  beginning  of  the  century  the 
Columbian  Museum,  where  was  to  be  seen  John  Adams  in  wax, 
with  "on  either  side  of  him  Liberty  with  staff  and  cap,  and  Justice 
with  sword  and  balance,"  and,  in  a  lighter  vein,  "  The  New  York 
Beauty "  and  "  The  Boston  Beauty."  This  was  probably  not  dis- 
similar from  the  Museum  of  Curiosities,  which  the  Rev.  Joseph 
Stewart,  forced  to  retire  from  the  ministry  by  ill  health,  set  uj)  at 
Hartford  in    1800. 

But  New  York  had  little  or  nothing  at  the  beginning  of  the  cen- 
tury. It  was  not  until  two  years  later,  in  1802,  that  the  first  step 
was  taken,  and  it  was  proposed  to  found  an  institution  for  the  pro- 


1 86  HISTORY    Ul'    AMERICAN    PAINTING 

motion  of  art,  under  the  title  of  "  The  New  York  Academy  of  Fine 
Arts."  Officers  were  elected,  but  the  institution  was  not  actually- 
incorporated  until  1808.  The  charter  fixed  the  name  as  the  "Ameri- 
can Academy  of  Arts,"  set  the  number  of  stockholders  at  one  thou- 
sand, the  price  of  the  shares  at  twenty-five  dollars,  and  limited  the 
income  to  fivQ  thousand  dollars  ])er  annum.  The  officers  elected 
were  the  most  prominent  men  in  the  city,  with  Robert  R.  Living- 
ston for  president,  Trumbull  for  vice-president,  and  DeWitt  Clinton 
and  David  Hosack  among  the  directors.  Before  the  charter  was 
obtained  Livingston,  who  was  then  minister  to  France,  purchased 
for  the  society  a  number  of  casts  from  the  antique,  and  they  were 
shown  in  the  winter  of  1803-1S04,  at  a  hired  building  originally  built 
for  a  circus  on  Greenwich  Street,  near  Morris.  The  exhibition  did 
not  pay,  and  the  casts  were  packed  and  stored  until  the  charter  was 
granted,  when  they  were  shown  in  the  upper  part  of  a  building  on 
Broadway,  once  intended  as  a  residence  for  the  President  of  the 
United  States,  subsequently  set  apart  for  the  governor's  house,  but 
finally  devoted  to  use  as  a  custom-house.  It  was  in  this  building 
that  Jarvis  lived,  about  18 15,  when  Liman  was  with  him  as  an 
apprentice,  and  the  casts  were  stored  there  at  that  time. 

Soon  after,  DeWitt  Clinton,  who  was  now  its  president,  made  an 
attempt  to  revive  the  Academy.  The  old  almshouse,  a  long  building 
facing  on  Chambers  Street,  where  the  County  Court-house  now 
stands,  was  vacant  (Dunlap  explains  that  the  paupers  had  been 
transferred  to  "  a  palace  at  Bellevue  "),  a  part  of  it  was  appropriated 
by  the  Corporation  to  the  American  Academy  of  Fine  Arts,  money 
was  borrowed  to  fit  up  the  galleries,  and  an  exhibition  was  held. 
The  display  was  a  good  one  for  the  time,  including  the  "  Lear," 
"  Ophelia,"  and  "  Orlando,"  by  West,  which  were  the  property  of 
1' ulton  ;  many  of  Trumbull's  l^est  pictures,  some  works  presented 
by  Napoleon,  and  the  full-length  portrait  of   West,  by  Lawrence. 

It  was  at  this  time  that  the  building,  "a  ])lain  range  of  brick 
near  the  City  Hall,"  was  visited  by  John  M.  Duncan,  an  ingenuous 
English  traveller,  who  had  a  kindly  word  to  say  for  most  of  the 
occupying  societies,  including  the  Lyceum  of  Natural  History  and 
the  Historical  Society,  as  well  as  the  Academy,  but  who  felt  obliged 
to  declare  that  the  wax  works  in  "  Scudder's  Museum  "  upstairs  were 


NEW   YORK    BECOMES   THE   ART   CENTRE  1 87 

"  prodigies  of  Absurdity  and  bad  taste."  He  had  previously  visited 
Peak's  Museum  and  the  Academy  in  Philadelphia,  in  the  latter  of 
which  he  saw,  besides  Allston's  "  Dead  Man  Revived,"  a  collection 
of  old  masters,  including  a  Raphael,  a  Correggio,  and  three  Titians, 
which  disappeared  during  the  succeeding  more  sceptical  years. 

The  receipts  at  first  from  the  New  York  Academy  exhibition 
were  far  beyond  expectation,  and  the  institution  seemed  entering  on 
a  career  of  prosperity.  On  October  23  of  18 16,  Governor  Clinton 
delivered  an  address  and  resigned.  Shortly  after  that  the  by-laws 
were  altered  so  that  twenty  Academicians  were  to  be  elected  from 
the  stockholders,  the  board  of  directors  was  to  consist  of  five,  of  whom 
not  more  than  three  were  to  be  Academicians,  which  board  was  later 
enlarged  to  eleven,  though  the  number  of  Academicians  in  it  remained 
the  same.  In  18 18  Trumbull  was  elected  president,  and  the  artist 
members  among  the  directors  were  Archibald  Robinson,  Waldo,  and 
Dunlap,  who  was  also  keeper  and  librarian.  The  directors,  misled 
by  the  results  of  the  first  exhibition,  launched  into  large  expendi- 
tures, the  most  serious  being  the  purchase  of  a  number  of  the 
president  s  pictures,  including  "  The  Woman  taken  in  Adultery " 
and  "  Suffer  Little  Children,"  at  $3500  each.  These  he  had  com- 
pleted a  few  years  before  in  London  and  were  in  West's  worst  style. 
But  the  exhibition  remaining  the  same  with  few  new  pictures,  attend- 
ance fell  off,  there  were  no  funds  and  no  means  of  payment,  and 
the  pictures  had  to  be  returned  to  the  artist.  An  attempt  to  obtain 
subscriptions  by  solicitation  was  without  permanent  success,  the 
stockholders  became  discouraged,  and  the  daily  attendance  was  not 
enough  to  pay  the  doorkeeper's  salary. 

There  had  been  an  attempt  at  the  time  of  moving  into  the  new 
rooms  to  open  a  school  where  students  might  draw  from  the  antique, 
but  the  hours  (from  six  to  eight  in  the  morning)  were  inconvenient, 
and  the  scheme  soon  fell  through.  The  whole  Academy  lapsed  into 
torpor  until  1824  or  1825,  when  the  school  was  again  reopened  and 
the  hours  extended  from  six  to  nine.  There  were  students  even  at 
these  hours,  but  the  curator  was  an  old  Revolutionary  soldier  who 
had  "  crossed  on  the  ice  from  New  York  to  Staten  Island  "  in  the 
"  memorable  winter,"  and  who  in  virtue  of  that  fact  was  insolent 
and  arbitrary  even  beyond  the  ordinary  of  the  tribe  of  doorkeepers. 


1 88  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

He  opened  the  gallery  when  he  saw  fit,  and  finally  one  morning  when 
Trumbull  came  about  eight  Dunlap  made  an  appeal  to  him  in  behalf 
of  a  couple  of  students  who  had  been  excluded  up  to  that  time.  The 
curator  asserted  that  he  would  open  the  doors  when  it  suited  him. 
The  president  sustained  him,  saying:  "When  I  commenced  to  study 
painting  there  were  no  casts  in  the  country,  I  was  obliged  to  do  as 
well  as  I  could.  These  young  gentlemen  should  remember  that  the 
gentlemen  have  gone  to  a  great  expense  in  importing  casts,  and  that 
they  (the  students)  have  no  property  in  them,"  concluding  with  these 
memorable  words,  in  encouragement  of  the  curator's  conduct,  "they 
must  remember  that  beggars  are  not  to  be  choosers." 

The  incident  is  related  by  Dunlap,  who  may  have  strengthened  the 
case  a  little,  but  it  agrees  perfectly  with  Trumbull's  character.  He  was 
at  heart  a  kindly  man  enough.  He  was  deeply  interested  in  art  and 
again  and  again  aided  beginners  with  counsel  and  money,  but  he  had 
an  exaggerated  idea  of  his  birth  and  importance.  Insistent  on  hav- 
ing his  own  way  and  absurdly  sensitive  to  any  imaginary  slights  which 
he  resented  with  a  pig-headed  stubbornness  or  unreasoning  invective, 
his  whole  behavior  was  that  of  a  spoiled  child.  He  threw  up  his 
commission  as  colonel  in  a  pet  on  account  of  an  alleged  error  of 
date ;  afterward  when  he  was  a  student  in  London  and  Reynolds 
said  of  a  picture  he  submitted  to  him  "that  coat  is  bad,  sir,  very  bad. 
It  is  not  cloth  —  it  is  tin,  bent  tin,"  he  admits,  "  the  criticism  was  but 
too  true,  but  its  severity  wounded  my  pride.  I  bowed  and  withdrew 
and  was  cautious  not  again  to  expose  my  imperfect  works  to  the  criti- 
cism of  Sir  Joshua."  Jefferson  had  been  his  friend,  had  aided  him 
in  every  way,  and  received  him  repeatedly  into  his  house  in  Paris; 
but  he  broke  with  him  permanently  because  when  one  of  his  guests, 
after  the  manner  of  the  time,  attacked  religion,  Jefferson  nodded  and 
smiled,  which  seemed  to  Trumbull  a  personal  attack  or  slight.  His 
animosity  even  extended  to  inanimate  nature,  and  surely  no  one  else 
before  or  since  ever  felt  obliged  to  speak  of  "the  filthy  water  of  that 
peculiarly  stagnant,  muddy  lake,"  referring  to  Lake  Champlain,  the 
camp  on  the  shores  of  which  was  not  to  his  mind.  These  personal 
])ecuHarilies  of  Trumljull  had  far-reaching  consequences  and  make 
him  appear  as  the  malicious  genius  of  the  Academy  of  Design  —  its 
one  invincible,  implacable  foe. 


FIG.    39.  — IX.MAN:     MUMBLE   THE   PEG,    PENNSYLVANIA   ACADEMY. 


NEW  YORK   BECOMES   THE   ART   CENTRE  19 1 

The  two  students  who  had  been  snubbed  in  this  uncivil  style 
were  F.  S.  Agate,  afterward  a  painter  of  some  merit,  and  T.  S. 
Cummings,  also  a  painter  but  leaving  a  more  permanent  record  as 
the  annalist  of  the  Academy  of  Design.  Cummings  was  studying 
painting  at  the  time  with  Inman,  who  took  up  his  cause  and  con- 
sulted Morse,  who  became  warmly  interested,  calling  a  meeting  of 
artists  at  his  rooms  where  the  propriety  of  petitioning  the  directors 
was  discussed  and  abandoned  and  the  plan  formed  for  a  drawing 
school  managed  by  the  artists  themselves.  This  was  organized  at 
another  meeting  held  on  Nov.  8,  1825,  with  Durand  in  the  chair 
and  Morse  as  secretary.  The  name  was  the  New  York  Drawing 
Association,  Morse  was  chosen  to  preside,  and  there  were  thirty 
members  enrolled.  Rooms  were  loaned  them  by  the  Historical  and 
Philosophical  Societies,  which  were,  like  the  American  Academy, 
quartered  in  the  old  almshouse,  and  work  was  begun  at  once.  But 
the  school  had  scarcely  been  running  a  month  when  a  characteristic 
interruption  occurred,  thus  described  by  Cummings:  "On  one  of 
the  drawing  evenings  in  December,  1825,  Colonel  Trumbull,  Presi- 
dent, and  Archibald  Robinson,  Secretary  of  the  American  Academy^ 
entered  the  room  in  which  the  associated  artists  were  drawing,  and 
going  directly  to  the  Presidents  seat,  took  possession  of  it,  and 
looking  authoritatively  around,  beckoned  to  the  writer,  who  was  in 
charge  of  the  room,  to  go  to  him  —  producing  the  matriculation  book 
of  the  American  Academy,  he  requested  that  it  should  be  signed  by 
all,  as  students  of  that  institution.  That  the  writer,  as  one,  declined, 
bowed  to  Mr.  Trumbull  and  left  him,  and  reported  to  the  members. 
The  Colonel  waited  some  time,  but  receiving  neither  compliance  nor 
attention,  left  in  the  same  stately  manner  he  had  entered,  remarking 
aloud,  that  he  had  left  the  book  for  our  signatures,  with  the  addi- 
tional request  that,  when  signed,  it  should  be  left  with  the  secretary 
of  the  American  Academy  !  " 

The  only  result  of  this  visit  was  a  specific  declaration  of  the 
independence  of  the  Drawing  Association  from  the  American 
Academy,  though  the  artists  were  still  willing  and  even  anxious  to 
unite  with  the  older  institution.  Conferences  were  held  between 
delegates,  and  it  was  finally  agreed  that  the  Academy  was  to  let 
six  artists  into  their  board  of  directors,  and  the  insurgents  were  to 


192  HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

return.  This  was  accepted  by  the  younger  men,  six  candidates  were 
chosen,  the  American  Academy  was  notified,  and  as  only  stockholders 
could  be  represented  on  the  board  and  only  two  of  the  six  were  so 
qualified,  shares  of  stock  were  bought  by  the  otlier  four  and  peace 
was  expected  to  reign  ;  but  when  the  election  was  held  six  artists 
were  indeed  made  directors,  but  only  two  from  the  list  furnished  by 
the  Drawing  Association.  These  immediately  resigned  in  wrath. 
War  was  openly  declared.  "  There  was  not  only  a  breach  of  faith, 
—  an  injury  inflicted  by  taking  the  money  of  the  Association  (which 
was  never  returned),  —  but  at  the  time  of  the  election  the  most  con- 
temptuous expressions  were  used  by  members  of  the  directory.  The 
artists  were  declared  unnecessary  to  the  institution,  and  one  of  the 
directors,  w^iose  name  is  spared,  proclaimed  that  '  artists  were  unfit 
to  manage  an  Academy'  — '  that  they  were  always  quai'-rclling',  and 
concluded  with  the  words,  'Colonel  Trumbull  says  so.'" 

Morse  now  took  the  lead  of  the  opposition,  and  on  his  suggestion 
fifteen  members  of  the  Drawing  Association  were  elected  by  the 
members,  and  these  were  to  immediately  elect  ten  more  professional 
artists  in  or  out  of  the  Association,  who  were  to  constitute  the 
National  Academy  of  the  Arts  of  Design,  a  title  carefully  selected 
on  the  ground  that  the  "arts  of  design  "  were  painting,  sculpture, 
architecture,  and  engraving,  while  the  "  fine  arts "  also  included 
poetry,  music,  landscape  gardening,  and  the  histrionic  arts. 

The  fifteen  Academicians  thus  elected  by  the  Association 
were :  — 

S.  F.  B.  Morse'  Peter  Maverick  (Engraver). 

Henry  Inman.  Ithiel  Town  (Architect). 

A.  B.  Durand  (Engraver).  Thomas  S.  Cummings. 

John  Frazee  (Sculptor).  Edward  Potter. 

William  Wall.  Charles  C.  Wright  (Engraver). 

Charles  C.  Ingham.  Mosely  J.  Danfortli  (Engraver). 

William  Dunlap.  Hugh  Reinagle. 

Gerlando  Marsigiio. 

These  elected  a  second  fifteen  :  — 

Samuel  Waldo.  John  W.  Paradise. 

William  Jewett.  P'rederic  S.  Agate. 


NEW   YORK   BECOMES  THE   ART   CENTRE  1 93 

Rembrandt  Peale.  John  Hvcrs. 

James  Coyle.  Martin  E.  Thompson  (Architect). 

Nathaniel  Rogers.  Thomas  Cole. 

J.  Parisen.  John  Vanderlyn. 

William  Main  (Engraver).  Alexander  Anderson  (Engraver). 

D.  W.  Wilson. 

The  first  fifteen  all  consented  to  serve ;  from  the  second  fifteen  there 
were  no  formal  acceptances  and  some  altogether  declined,  among 
whom  was  Vanderlyn,  who  published  a  bitter  letter  against  the  pre- 
sumption of  the  new  Academy  in  publishing  his  name  without  his 
consent. 

As  soon  as  the  organization  was  effected,  Morse  published  an 
address  to  the  public,  and  a  committee  was  appointed  to  arrange  for 
an  exhibition  in  the  spring,  which  eventually  took  place  in  "  a  room 
on  the  second  story  of  a  house  on  the  southwest  corner  of  Broadway 
and  Reade  Street  —  an  ordinary  dwelling,  and  not  covering  an  area 
of  more  than  twenty-five  by  fifty  feet,  with  no  other  than  the  usual 
side  windows."  The  display  was  preceded  by  a  reception,  where  the 
Academicians  with  white  rosettes  in  their  buttonholes  received  the 
invited  guests: — "His  Excellency  Governor  Clinton  and  suite,  his 
Honor  the  Mayor,  the  Common  Council  of  the  City  ('then  a 
respectable  body,'  adds  Cummings),  the  Judges  of  the  Courts,  the 
Faculty  of  Columbia  College,  the  members  of  the  American  Acad- 
emy of  Fine  Arts,  and  the  persons  of  distinction  at  present  residing 
in  the  city."  The  next  day,  May  14,  the  display  was  opened  to  the 
public.  It  consisted  of  "copies,  originals  —  Oil  Paintings  and 
Water  Colors,  Drawings  for  Machinery,  Architecturals,  Engravings, 
—  etc.  etc.,  to  the  unprecedented  number  of  one  hundred  and  seventy 
productions."  Morse  and  Dunlap  wrote  appeals  to  the  public  in  the 
catalogue ;  the  rooms  were  opened  in  the  evening  and  lighted  by 
six  gas  jets.  But  the  exhibition  closed  with  a  deficit  which  the 
Academicians  taxed  themselves  to  pay. 

And  it  was  not  financial  trouble  alone  that  the  new  Academy 
had  to  face.  There  was  a  strong  social  feeling  against  them  fostered 
by  the  eminently  respectable,  conservative  gentlemen  connected 
with  the  rival  institution.    There  were  attacks  and  defences,  threshed 


194  HISTORY    OF    AMERICAN    PAINTING 

out  in  lono:  articles  in  the  Noi'th  Auicricaii  Review  and  in  letters  to 
the  daily  press.  Morse  was  the  chief  spokesman  for  the  National 
Academy  of  Design,  fighting  in  the  open  over  his  own  signature,  and 
he  shows  to  advantage,  keeping  his  temper,  wliich  others  did  not, 
and  using  argument  rather  than  invective.  The  squabbles  which 
caused  it  to  be  formed  and  the  principle  of  artistic  management  upon 
which  it  rested  were  gone  over  with  much  recrimination,  insult,  and 
charges  of  bad  faith,  and  in  the  end  no  one  was  convinced.  During 
the  fight  the  National  Academy  had  continued  its  drawing  schools, 
with  lectures  on  anatomy  and  perspective,  held  its  second  exhibition 
of  works  of  living  artists  only  (which  paid  expenses),  became  incor- 
porated, and  voted  that  thereafter  "  none  but  original  works  shall 
be  exhibited,"  and  finally.  May  5,  1828,  held  its  third  exhibition  pre- 
ceded by  a  private  reception,  with  a  committee  in  attendance  to 
receive  the  company,  and  a  collation  on  the  table  during  the  whole 
day  and  a  carpet  on  the  floor  during  the  whole  exhibition. 

The  new  society  had  established  itself  and  as  it  gained  strength 
the  old  American  Academy  fell  behind,  its  schools  were  closed,  its 
exhibitions  small  and  poorly  attended,  and  the  friends  of  the  National 
Academy  ceased  to  be  apologetic  and  became  aggressive.  Shortly 
after  the  opening  of  the  exhibition  a  series  of  letters  appeared  in 
the  Evening  Post  signed  "  Denon,"  and  comparing  the  two  institu- 
tions decidedly  to  the  disadvantage  of  the  older  one.  The  letters 
were  ascribed  to  Morse,  though  he  did  not  write  them,  and  drew 
out  bitter  answers  and  finally  a  personal  attack  from  Trumbull, 
which  was  answered  by  Morse.  More  joined  in  until  everything 
had  been  said  that  it  was  possible  to  say  and  the  discussion  died 
away  and  was  not  renewed,  although  it  left  a  train  of  animosities 
behind  it. 

There  were  other  efforts  made  to  unite  the  two  Academies,  the 
most  important  in  1833  when  conference  committees  were  appointed, 
and  a  joint  report  agreed  to  by  them,  so  that  it  was  supposed  that 
the  matter  was  settled ;  but  at  the  critical  moment  when  it  was  to 
have  been  laid  before  the  directors  of  the  American  Academy, 
Trumbull  arose,  drew  from  his  pocket  a  paper,  which  he  proceeded 
to  read,  praising  the  nobility  and  liberality  of  the  founders  and 
inveighing   against    union  with   any  other   institution.       His   paper 


FIG.    40.  — INGHAM:     FLOWER    GIRL,    METROPOLITAN    MUSEUM. 


NEW  YORK  BECOMES  THE  ART  CENTRE  197 

was  ordered  printed  and  liis  views  were  followed,  the  report  of  the 
committee  not  even  being  j^resented.  Trumbull's  action  was  said 
to  have  been  due  to  the  fact  that  he  had  ascertained  that  he  was 
not  to  be  elected  president  of  the  consolidated  Academy.  There 
were  some  sporadic  attempts  made  later,  but  nothing  was  done  and 
the  fine  old  conservative  American  Academy  slowly  sank  into  a 
moribund  state  until  in  1841  its  remaining  property  was  sold  for 
debt,  and  it  ceased  to  exist  even  as  a  name,  the  National  Academy 
profiting  by  its  fall  to  purchase  its  collection  of  casts,  which  same 
casts,  originally  purchased  by  Livingston,  were  used  in  its  schools 
until  they  were  almost  all  destroyed  by  fire  in  1905,  a  little  over  a 
century  after  their  arrival  in  the  country. 

In  the  meanwhile  the  National  Academy  continued,  with  some 
difficult  periods  and  some  falling  off  of  the  youthful  energy  that  had 
started  it,  but  with  a  steady  advance  that  made  it  on  the  whole  the 
most  important  influence  in  American  painting  until  well  after  the 
Civil  War.  It  was  an  influence  not  only  artistic  but  social.  It 
brought  the  artists  together  in  an  organized  body,  and  from  their 
personal  intercourse  came  a  vaguer,  less  formal,  but  more  potent 
influence.  Most  of  the  early  Academicians  were  men  of  exception- 
ally high,  pure  character,  and  their  friends  represented  the  best 
culture  of  the  time.  The  list  of  honorary  lay  members  was  a  roll 
of  honor.  When  with  time  the  painters  outgrew  the  reproach  of 
youth  which  fell  so  heavily  upon  them  at  first,  the  artists  exercised 
an  indirect  power  in  New  York,  not  to  be  compared  with  that  of 
their  coii/r'eres  in  France  or  Germany,  but  greater  than  in  any  other 
American  city.  This  influence  was  felt  from  the  beginning.  Whether 
all  of  those  set  down  on  the  notable  list  of  dignitaries  invited  to  the 
opening  reception  of  the  National  Academy  attended,  is  doubtful. 
The  members  of  the  American  Academy,  for  instance,  would  be  apt 
to  find  the  surroundings  uncongenial ;  but  it  was  an  attempt  (possibly 
the  first  made  in  the  country)  to  give  the  followers  of  the  fine  arts  a 
standing  not  only  as  individuals,  but  as  a  body. 

Soon  after  a  further  effort  was  made  to  unite  artists,  authors,  men 
of  science,  and  lovers  of  art  by  congenial  intercourse  among  them- 
selves, and  the  Sketch  Club  was  founded,  "  the  old  Sketch  Club,"  so 
called  to  distino-uish  it  from  later  orijanizations  of  like  nature.      It 


198  HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

had  its  rise  in  the  second  year  of  the  Academy,  wlien  tlie  professors 
of  the  scl"iool  —  Morse,  Durand,  Cummings,  and  Ingham  —  were 
regretting  the  demise  of  a  previous  chib,  tlic  "  Lunch."  Ingham  sug- 
gested a  new  society.  But  as  a  rivahy  in  expenditure  liad  been 
fatal  to  the  "  Lunch,"  which  had  met  at  a  hotel  to  be  entertained  by 
the  host  of  the  evening,  it  was  determined  to  make  the  Sketch  Club 
as  inexpensive  as  possible;  meetings  were  to  be  held  in  rotation  at 
the  homes  of  the  members,  and  as  they  proposed  to  fleet  the  time 
carelessly  as  they  did  in  the  golden  world,  so  the  refreshments  were 
limited  to  blameless  and  inexpensive  food  —  dried  fruits,  crackers, 
milk  and  honey,  and  the  like. 

The  first  meeting  was  held  at  Thomas  Cole's,  and  the  diet  of  figs, 
and  milk  and  honey  was  entered  upon  with  enthusiasm,  but  after  com- 
paring experiences  the  next  morning  the  diet  of  the  golden  age  was 
somewhat  amended  out  of  respect  for  the  weaknesses  of  the  modern 
man.  The  club,  however,  still  maintained  its  simplicity,  in  spite  of 
repeated  attempts  to  introduce  luxurious  living,  and  a  tendency  of 
the  milk  and  honey  to  develop  into  oysters  and  champagne.  It 
long  remained  an  honored  and  envied  organization.  The  meetings 
at  the  members'  homes  and  the  rule  that  a  single  blackball  excluded 
kept  the  membership  down  and  rendered  it  almost  impregnable  to 
new  aspirants,  and  about  a  score  of  years  after  its  foundation  the 
members  added  more  to  their  number,  rented  permanent  rooms,  and 
founded  the  "  Century  Association,"  though  the  Sketch  Club  still 
continued  its  existence  as  a  separate  body. 

This,  however,  is  of  1847  ;  in  1826,  when  the  National  Academy 
began,  the  members  were  a  weaker  body.  Of  the  original  members 
some  were  fairly  established  in  their  j^rofession,  and  some,  like  Morse, 
Dunlap,  and  Waldo,  belonged  to  the  earlier  generation  that  studied 
in  England  with  West,  but  most  of  them  were  younger  men.  Promi- 
nent among  them  was  Henry  Inman,  whose  career  has  been  given 
among  the  Philadelphia  artists.  He  had  encouraged  Cummings, 
who  was  his  pupil,  in  his  revolt  against  the  .American  Academy  and 
was  influential  in  forming  the  "  New  York  Drawing  Association,"  and 
when  this  led  to  the  founding  of  the  Academy  of  Design,  he  was 
elected  the  first  vice-president,  and  retained  the  office  until  he 
removed  to  Philadelphia  in  1832. 


NEW  YORK  BECOMES  THE  ART  CENTRE 


199 


Almost  eciually  active  and  prominent  with  Inman  in  the  begin- 
nings of  the  new  Academy  was  Charles  Cromwell  Ingham,  who 
lived  to  be  one  of  its  leading  members.  He  was  born  in  Dublin, 
Ireland,  in  i  796,  but  was  as  may  be  conjectured  from  his  middle  name 
of  English  stock.  He  was  precocious,  drawing  from  his  earliest 
childhood,  and  his  taste  was  encouraged  by  his  family,  who  saw  that 
he  had  the  best  instruction  available  from  the  time  he  was  thirteen. 
At  eighteen  he  received  a  premium  for  a  composition  in  oil  of  the 
"Death  of  Cleopatra,"  which  Dunlap  pronounces  "a  wonderful 
specimen  of  skill,  considered  as  the  production  of  a  boy."  When 
two  years  later  he  came  to  New  York  with  his  father's  family,  he 
brought  the  picture  with  him  and  it  was  shown  at  the  first  exhibi- 
tion of  the  old  Academy  and  much  admired.  Although  only  twenty 
years  old  and  looking  scarcely  sixteen,  he  established  himself  as  a 
portrait  painter  and  continued  a  successful  practitioner  until  his 
death  in  1863. 

Ingham's  painting  was  of  a  style  little  known  in  America,  neat, 
laborious,  elaborate,  every  detail  minutely  drawn  and  finished  by 
successive  glazings.  The  result  of  such  labor  is  apt  to  be  hard  and 
shiny,  but  the  high  finish  made  him  popular  as  a  ladies'  portrait 
painter,  and  the  careful  technique  gave  a  wonderful  purity  and 
brilliancy  to  his  coloring.  He  could  draw  fiowers,  for  instance,  with 
the  painstaking  accuracy  of  the  Dutch  still-life  painters  of  the 
seventeenth  century ;  and  if  he  lacked  their  strength  and  fine  decora- 
tive feeling  for  line  and  composition,  yet  his  color  surpasses  them  in 
brightness  and  richness,  and  has  endured  without  the  slightest  altera- 
tion. 

Another  Dublin  man  was  William  G.  Wall,  who,  born  in  1792, 
came  to  New  York  in  18 18,  and  though  of  no  particular  importance 
as  an  artist  still  had  some  reputation  for  his  views  of  the  Hudson 
and  other  American  landscapes,  done  mostly  in  water-color  and  with 
much  facility.  G.  Marsiglia  was  also  a  foreigner  who  came  from 
Italy  in  181 7,  and  whose  coloring  had  something  of  the  crudeness 
of  the  Italian  school  of  the  time. 

The  American-born  were  further  represented  by  Agate,  a  prom- 
ising young  pupil  of  Morse  who  went  to  Italy  in  1835  and  studied 
there,  but  who  died  before  he  had  reached  full  maturity  ;  by  John 


200  HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

Paradise,  an  older  man,  much  esteemed  among  the  Methodists,  to 
which  sect  he  belonged  and  whose  paintings  furnished  the  subjects 
for  the  engravings  in  the  Methodist  Magazine;  and  by  Huge 
Reinagle,  a  scene  and  landscape  painter  who  died  in  New  Orleans 
of  cholera  in  1834. 

Most  of  these  men  exhibited  with  fair  regularity  in  the  annual 
exhibitions.  In  fact,  a  law  was  soon  passed  by  which  an  Academi- 
cian who  failed  for  two  years  to  show  work  became  an  honorary  mem- 
ber and  lost  his  active  right  to  vote.  In  the  first  exhibition,  besides 
members,  Jarvis,  Allston,  and  even  Trumbull  were  represented, 
presumably  by  pictures  borrowed  from  their  owners  without  the 
painters'  consent.  So  in  later  years,  Gilbert  Stuart,  G.  S.  Newton, 
and  Leslie,  also  Chester  Harding,  Alexander,  and  others  appeared  ; 
but  the  bulk  of  the  exhibition  was  furnished  by  men  living  in 
or  near  New  York.  Morse  was  an  important  exhibitor,  Dunlap 
apparently  turned  out  all  of  his  old  as  well  as  his  new  work,  and 
Cummings,  Agate,  Marsiglia,  Ingham,  Inman,  sent  eight,  ten,  even 
eighteen  canvases  at  a  time.  At  first  portraiture  largely  pre- 
dominated, in  fact  of  the  pictures  painted  in  America  before  this 
time  very  few  except  portraits  have  been  preserved.  We  know  that 
while  both  the  demands  of  their  patrons  and  the  difficulties  of  doing 
other  work  tended  to  confine  the  artists  to  that  branch,  yet  from  the 
earliest  times  they  painted  many  other  things.  Tempted  thereto 
by  engravings  or  remnants  of  Old  World  tradition  or  training,  many 
essayed  the  grand  style,  —  religious,  allegoric,  or  historic.  Familiar 
genre  was  also  tried,  and  landscape  and  sign  painters  sometimes 
made  still-life  studies  to  be  hung  on  the  inside  instead  of  the  outside 
of  houses;  but  the  demand  was  uncertain,  the  itinerant  craftsman,  if 
fortunate,  got  orders  for  portraits  but  rarely  for  anything  else,  and 
the  piety  of  descendants  which  preserved  the  likenesses  of  their 
forebears  had  no  interest  in  retaining  other  uncouth  canvases  of  like 
date  after  they  had  once  lost  their  freshness.  Occasionally  one 
appears  in  some  old  house  or  on  the  dusty  walls  of  a  local  "  Histori- 
cal Society,"  more  undoubtedly  lie  forgotten  in  old  garrets,  but  even 
if  brought  forth  they  would  gratify  little  save  an  archaeological 
curiosity.  Nor  did  "  the  grand  style  "  ever  resume  its  sway.  There 
was    some    demand    for     huire    canvases    like    Rembrandt     Peale's 


NEW   YORK   BECOMES  THE   ART   CENTRE  20I 

"Court  of  Death,"  and  Dunlap  painted  a  "  Christ  Rejected"  in  1822, 
the  "Bearing  of  the  Cross"  in  1824,  "Death  on  the  Pale  Horse," 
from  an  outHne  engraving  of  West's  work,  a  "  Calvary"  in  1828,  and 
exhibited  them  in  halls  and  schoolhouses  throughout  the  country ; 
but  his  success  was  not  great.  The  public  taste  was  still  for 
portraits;  Inman  blazed  away  to  a  questioner,  "I  tell  you,  sir,  the 
business  of  a  few  generations  of  artists  in  this  country  as  in  all 
others  is  to  prepare  the  way  for  their  successors  —  for  the  time  will 
come  when  the  rage  for  portraits  in  America  will  give  way  to  a 
purer  taste." 

The  change  which  came  was  perhaps  not  to  a  "  purer  taste,"  but 
the  growth  of  a  large  merchant  class  in  the  cities,  with  no  high 
ideals  or  feeling  for  art,  yet  well  housed  and  comfortably  rich,  created 
a  demand  for  small  pictures,  familiar  genre,  costume  pieces,  still-life 
and  the  like,  and  the  annual  exhibitions  of  the  Academy  gave  an 
opportunity  for  their  display  and  sale ;  moreover,  this  showing  of 
their  works  together,  and  the  intercourse  of  the  artists,  tended  to 
raise  the  execution  to  a  certain  respectable  degree  of  skill.  From 
these  conditions  there  arose  a  new  class  of  painting,  trivial  and 
rather  crude,  democratic  as  the  old  colonial  work  had  been  aristo- 
cratic, yet  with  all  its  faults  adapted  to  the  taste  of  the  country. 


CHAPTER    XI 

FIGURE   PAINTING   IN  NEW  YORK    IN  THE  MIDDLE  OF  THE  NINETEENTH 

CENTURY 

Character  of  Life  and  Taste  in  New  York.  —  George  W.  Flagg. — Jared  B. 
Flagg.  —  W.  S.  Mount.  —  R.  Caton  Woodville. — The  Art  Union,  its  Rise 
and  Fall.  —  Luman  Reed.  —  Introduction  of  Foreign  Work.  —  Spread  of  Taste 
for  Pictures. — Tuckerman"s  "Book  of  the  Artists'' 

The  English  influence  founded  on  colonial  tics  and  on  the  splendid 
short-lived  outbursts  of  English  portrait  painting  was  fading  out. 
The  students  of  West  were  dead  or  growing  old,  and  the  younger 
ones  amoncj  them  had  wandered  more  or  less  from  London  to  Paris 
and  Rome.  A  new  period  of  development  in  American  art  was 
beginning  —  a  period  in  general  of  less  lofty  aims,  owing  less  to  for- 
eign tradition  and  training,  more  native  in  feeling  and  justifying  in  a 
way  its  modest  character  by  the  increased  public  to  which  it  could 
appeal.  Of  this  movement  New  York  was  the  centre.  Other  cities 
still  continued  to  have  their  painters,  notably  Boston,  which  has 
always  had  an  important  local  school  from  Pelham's  time  down  to 
to-day  ;  Philadelphia,  Baltimore,  Charleston,  all  had  their  practitioners, 
but  their  influence  was  not  widespread.  It  was  to  New  York  that 
the  rising  artist  came;  it  was  from  New  York  that  artistic  influence 
went  out,  and  this  rather  in  spite  of  the  spirit  of  the  place  than  on 
account  of  it.  As  has  been  said  at  the  beginning  of  the  last  chapter, 
it  was  from  purely  commercial  reasons  that  New  York  took  her  posi- 
tion as  the  undisputed  metropolis  of  the  Western  world.  She  had  no 
political  importance,  she  was  the  centre  of  no  intellectual  or  religious 
movement,  but  she  had  a  good  climate,  the  best  harbor  on  the  coast, 
and  the  easiest  access  to  the  interior.  Her  leading  citizens  were 
merchants  and  successful  ones,  and  with  wealth  and  ])()]nflation  there 
came  in  time  a  leadership  for  which  she  had  never  consciously 
striven. 

202 


FIGURE   PAINTING   IN    NEW   YORK 


203 


When  in  1S30  Mrs,  Trollopc  reached  New  York  after  contemplat- 
ing the  Domestic  Manners  of  the  Americans  in  the  Soutli  and  West, 
she  gave  it  unstinted  praise,  declaring  it  one  of  the  finest  cities  she 
ever  saw  and  much  superior  to  any  other  in  the  Union,  Philadelphia 
not  excepted.  But  while  she  visited  and  admired  the  collections  in 
the  Academy  in  the  latter  town,  and  even  has  a  good  word  to  say 
for  Rembrandt  Peale's  Museum  in  Baltimore,  and  a  picture  of 
"  Hagar  and  Ishmael  "  by  Chapman  at  Alexandria,  she  found  noth- 
ing to  admire  in  all  the  exhibitions  of  New  York  except  the  pictures 


Fig.  41.  —  Mount:  The  Goose  Raffle,  Metropolitan  Museum. 

by  Colonel  Trumbull ;  and  when,  about  the  same  date,  Fenimore 
Cooper,  writing  in  the  guise  of  an  intelligent  foreigner,  explained  the 
domestic  economy  of  the  New  Yorker  and  described  typical  interiors 
with  the  minutest  detail,  omittins:  not  even  the  fire  irons  nor  the 
window  curtains,  there  was  no  mention  of  a  picture  anywhere. 

The  fact  is  that  during  this  time  there  prevailed  in  trade  the  "hun- 
gry philosophy  "  of  Poor  Richard's  Almanac  ;  economy  was  the  basis 
of  wealth,  a  penny  saved  was  a  penny  earned,  and  while  the  rigor  of 


204  HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

the  rule  was  relaxed  for  the  material  comforts  of  life,  a  man  who 
fooled  away  his  money  on  such  things  as  pictures  was  looked  at 
askance  by  his  business  associates  and  his  credit  and  capacity 
doubted.  Moreover,  there  was  little  knowledge.  Few  even  of  the 
wealthy  had  any  experience  of  art  except  as  something  of  which  they 
read  in  books.  Mrs.  Trollope,  after  declaring  that  "the  Medici  of 
the  Republic  must  exert  themselves  before  they  can  become  even 
respectable,"  goes  on  to  say:  "  The  worst  of  the  business  is  that  with 
the  exception  of  about  half  a  dozen  individuals  the  good  citizens  are 
more  than  contented,  they  are  delighted.  The  newspaper  lungs  of 
the  Republic  breathe  forth  praise  and  triumph,  nay,  almost  pant  with 
ecstasy  in  speaking  of  their  native  chef  d'cciivrcs.  I  should  hardly 
be  believed  were  I  to  relate  the  instances  which  fell  in  my  way,  of 
the  utter  ignorance  respecting  pictures  to  be  found  among  persons 
of  \\-\Q.  first  standing  in  society.  Often  when  a  liberal  spirit  exists 
and  a  wish  to  patronize  the  fine  arts  is  expressed,  it  is  joined  to  a 
profundity  of  ignorance  on  the  subject  almost  inconceivable,"  and 
elsewhere  the  good  lady  records  her  indignation  at  fellow-travellers 
who  insisted  that  Chester  Harding  was  a  better  painter  than  Sir 
Thomas  Lawrence. 

This  was  the  public  to  which  the  National  Academicians  had  to 
cater;  but  they  had  the  advantage  of  being  in  sympathy  with  it  and 
on  much  the  same  plane  of  culture.  It  is  surprising  that  they  did 
so  well.  Portraiture,  of  course,  in  all  its  phases,  from  miniatures  and 
silhouettes  to  life-sized  full-lengths,  was  a  standard  article  and  nearly 
all  turned  their  hand  to  that  as  occasion  offered ;  but  apart  from  por- 
traiture the  chief  demand  was  for  small  pictures.  For  religious 
painting  in  the  old  ample  sense  there  was  no  opportunity,  but  a  cer- 
tain type  of  Bible  illustration  and  pietistic  allegory  fiourished.  Sen- 
timental figures  and  heads  of  orphan  girls  and  Italian  boys  were 
furnished  by  men  like  George  W.  Flagg  and  his  younger  brother 
Jared  B.  They  were  nephews  of  Allston,  had  received  his  counsels, 
and  strove  to  rei)r()duce  in  historical  scenes  and  single  figures  the 
mild  sentiment  and  grace  of  his  smaller  canvases,  with  enough  skill 
and  feeling  to  give  them  success  during  their  lives,  but  not  to  interest 
posterity. 

A  robuster  type  of  figure   piece  was  produced   by  \V.  S.  Mount, 


FIGURE   PAINTING    IN    NEW   YORK  205 

the  youngest  of  three  brothers,  Long  Island  fnrmer  boys,  who  all 
practised  art,  entering  through  the  humble  door  of  sign  painting. 
The  others  devoted  themselves  mostly  to  portraits  with  some  success  ; 
but  the  youngest,  who  began  in  New  York  with  a  scriptural  composi- 
tion of  the  "  Daughter  of  Jairus  "  and  portraits  of  children,  was  forced 
from  the  city  by  ill  health  and  is  now  known  for  his  series  of  pictures 
of  the  everyday  farm  life  that  he  saw  about  his  home.  These  are 
of  astonishing  merit  and  have  hardly  been  surpassed  since.  Allston, 
who  saw  some  of  them,  advised  him  to  study  Ostade  and  Jan  Steen, 
though  how  he  was  to  do  so  except  through  engravings  is  not  clear ; 
but  whether  he  followed  the  advice  or  not  it  is  the  Dutch  naturalists 
that  his  work  suggests.  He  saw  the  farmers,  field-hands,  tavern- 
keepers  of  Long  Island,  he  understood  and  enjoyed  their  life  and 
painted  it  in  its  uncouth  simplicity.  He  had  no  such  tcchniqice  as 
his  great  prototypes,  but  he  painted  better  than  almost  any  one  else 
about  him.  His  figures  are  well  drawn  and  well  constructed,  and 
hold  their  places  in  their  respective  planes.  The  faces  are  well 
characterized  without  exaggeration,  and  the  attitudes  of  the  little 
dancing,  fiddling,  or  fighting  figures  are  natural  and  original. 

The  only  one  of  Mount's  contemporaries  who  can  compare  with 
him  is  R.  Caton  Woodville,  who  was  his  junior  by  some  ten  years. 
But  Woodville's  art  was  no  such  distinctively  native  product  as 
Mount's.  He  was  born  in  Baltimore  about  1820,  of  good  family,  a 
graduate  of  St.  Mary's  College,  and  had  access  to  the  pictures  of 
Robert  Gilmore,  then  one  of  the  best  collections  in  the  country.  His 
first  efforts  had  hardly  been  favorably  received  when  he  left  for  Diis- 
seldorf  to  study,  and  from  that  time  until  his  premature  death  in 
London,  in  1855,  he  spent  most  of  his  time  abroad,  though  making 
two  short  visits  to  his  native  land  from  w^hich  also  he  drew  the  sub- 
jects of  most  of  his  paintings.  Educated  thus,  Woodville's  workman- 
ship was  practically  that  of  the  Diisseldorf  school  and  need  fear  no 
comparison  with  the  best  of  it.  It  was  without  weaknesses,  the  com- 
position, drawing,  and  color  all  being  thoroughly  competent.  In 
color  especially  he  is  often  stronger  and  purer  than  his  German  con- 
temporaries and  much  better  than  Mount,  who  was  no  colorist  in  the 
strict  sense,  though  his  pictures  often  have  a  pleasant  brown  tone. 
But  Mount's  pictures  have  the  charm  of  real  groups  sympathetically 


206 


HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAINTINO 


rendered  ;  they  carry  the  conviction  of  the  thing  seen,  whereas  Wood- 
ville's  compositions  seem  to  have  been  worked  up  mentally  with 
constant  reference  to  their  story-telling  effect. 

Few  of  the  other  })ainters  of  the  life  of  the  time  were  above 
mediocrity.  Bingham  produced  rustic  scenes  in  the  style  of  Mount, 
and  his  "Jolly  Flat  Boat  Men,"  engraved  by  the  Art  Union,  may 
still  be  found  hanging  in  old  tavern  barrooms;  but  his  skill  was 
not  great,  and  the  same  may  be  said  of  the  humorous  <^curc  of  John 


Jii;.  42.  —  MoiNT:   Music  hath  Chak.ms,  Ckmikv  Assi  kiaiidn. 

W.  Edmunds,  who  added   the  practice  of  art  to  his  duties  as  bank 
cashier. 

ContemjK)rary  with  tliese  men,  and  in  fact  preceding  them  some- 
what, were  the  early  j^ainters  of  American  landscape;  but  while  the 
early  figure  men  are  in  a  way  in  a  class  bv  themselves,  and  Mount, 
for  instance,  had  no  successor,  the  landscape  school  has  had  a  steady, 
unbroken  development  from  its  first  beginnings  down  to  the  present, 
and  its  most  notable  successes  were  in  the  latter  half  of  the  cen- 


FIGURE   PAINTING    IN    NEW    YORK 


207 


tury.  Before  this,  in  llie  forties,  just  as  the  National  Academy  of 
Design  was  affirming  itself,  special  iniluences  were  brought  to  bear 
on  art.  The  first  was  purely  material,  but  important  —  tlie  founding 
of  the  Art  Union,  This  was  begun  in  1S38  and  first  called  the 
Apollo  Association,  the  meetings  and  exhibitions  being  held  in 
the  Apollo  Gallery.  It  was  modelled  after  similar  societies  abroad, 
and  the  principle  was,  in  brief,  to  collect  five  dollars  from  each  mem- 
ber, to  expend  the  money  on  works  of  art  likely  to  })lease  the  popular 
taste,  and  after  holding  an  exhibition  to  distribute  them  among 
the  members  by  lot.  The  scheme  was  a  success  from  the  start. 
The  Union  was  energetic  and  efficient.  It  had  engravings  and 
medals  made  for  its  subscribers,  it  published  a  paper,  the  Bulletin, 
which  was  well  written,  and  contained  some  sound  criticism  on  the 
art  of  the  day.  Its  exhibitions  were  so  successful  that  the  Academy 
of  Design,  which  was  at  first  inclined  to  look  on  it  favorably,  dis- 
covered that  it  was  a  dangerous  rival.  It  distributed  annually  from 
five  hundred  to  a  thousand  works  of  art.  Its  subscriptions  increased 
to  a  hundred  thousand  dollars  a  year,  and  then  it  was  discovered 
that  the  scheme  violated  the  statute  against  lotteries,  and  after  a 
dozen  years'  existence  it  was  dissolved  in  the  moment  of  its  greatest 
prosperity.  How  much  more  widely  it  would  have  developed  it  is 
impossible  to  say  ;  but  it  had  already  accomplished  an  important 
work  when  the  law  cut  short  its  career.  It  had  popularized  art,  as 
nothing  else  could  have  done,  by  its  appeal  to  the  gambling  instinct. 
The  fee  was  but  small  and  included  as  certainties  free  entrance  to 
the  exhibitions,  a  subscription  to  the  Bulletin,  and  a  copy  of  a  pretty 
good  engraving.  All  sorts  of  people  subscribed,  who  would  never 
have  considered  the  outright  purchase  of  a  painting  —  business  firms, 
literary  societies,  and  even  the  volunteer  fire  companies;  but  when 
the  possessor  of  a  lucky  number  hung  on  the  wall  the  canvas  that  he 
had  won,  it  became  to  him  a  source  of  pride  and  pleasure.  It  must 
be  said,  too,  that  the  Union  catered  wisely  to  the  popular  taste. 
The  list  of  their  purchases  and  the  prices  may  still  be  read  in  the 
Bulletin,  and  few  artists  of  the  day  were  unrepresented.  It  was 
particularly  serviceable  as  the  patron  of  rising  talent,  though  the 
prices  given  were  not  large. 

When  the  Art  Union  no  longer  existed,  its  former  patrons  turned 


2o8  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

to  the  .Vcadcmy  of  Design  or  to  the  artists  tliemselves  to  gratify 
their  new-found  taste.  Even  before  its  time  one  patron  of  Ameri- 
can art  had  appeared,  Luman  Reed,  whose  name  is  never  mentioned 
in  the  annals  of  the  time  witliout  respect  and  admiration.  He  was 
a  merchant,  rich,  but  not  exceptionally  so  even  as  riches  were  rated 
in  the  thirties  ;  but  he  loved  art  and  the  society  of  the  artists. 
Inman,  Mount,  Morse,  Durand,  Cole,  Flagg,  and  many  others  w-ere 
aided  by  him.  He  not  only  bought  their  works  at  liberal  prices, 
often  higher  than  was  asked,  but  he  cultivated  their  friendship,  and 
helped  them  in  their  troubles.  His  paintings  were  displayed  in  a 
gallery  in  his  house  in  Greenwich  Street,  and  after  his  death  in  1836 
it  was  endeavored  to  continue  the  collection  as  the  New  York  Gal- 
lery of  Fine  Arts,  but  the  receipts  from  admission  were  less  than  the 
cost  of  maintenance,  so  the  pictures  were  finally  deposited  with  the 
New  York  Historical  Society,  in  whose  galleries  they  still  remain. 

Luman  Reed's  younger  partner,  Jonathan  Sturges,  was  also  a 
patron  of  American  art  until  his  death  in  1874,  but  as  a  rule  there 
were  no  such  important  individual  collectors.  There  was,  how- 
ever, from  many  sources,  a  steady  demand  for  pictures  not  only 
native  but  also  foreign,  and  it  is  from  this  time  that  New  York  com- 
menced to  be  a  market  for  European  work.  There  had  been  already 
some  sporadic  dealing,  mostly  in  "  old  masters."  In  1839  the  Abra- 
ham collection  was  brought  over,  later  came  that  of  Cardinal  Fesch ; 
while  for  a  score  of  years  "old  Paff "  had  a  shop  under  the  Astor 
House,  where  he  dealt  in  darkened,  damaged  canvases  by  Titian, 
Correggio,  and  Raphael.  He  was  a  grotesque  old  man,  of  whose 
amazing  enthusiasm  and  ignorance  many  stories  are  told.  We 
laugh  now  at  the  sort  of  canv^ases  that  were  offered  to  the  early  col- 
lectors and  at  the  critical  insight  that  accepted  them  as  genuine ;  but 
some  good  pictures  drifted  over  from  the  revolutions  and  unrest  of 
the  early  part  of  the  century,  and  there  were  some  collectors  capable 
of  judging  of  them,  as  many  of  the  canvases  buried  in  the  galleries 
of  the  New  York  Historical  Society  (and  haply  to  be  resurrected 
when  the  new  building  is  completed)  can  testify. 

It  w^as  later,  however,  that  the  modern  foreign  invasion  began. 
Just  before  the  Art  Union  was  dissolved,  Goupil,  Vibert  &  Company 
of  Paris  established  a  branch  in   New  York,  mainly  for  the  sale  of 


FICxURE    PAINTING    IN    NEW   YORK 


209 


prints,  but  also  of  oil  paintings;  and  an  International  Art  Union  was 
started  which  the  native  one  fiercely  combated  until  the  law  put  a 
stop  to  both.  About  the  same  time  the  Dlisscldorf  Gallery  took  up 
its  quarters  on  Broadway,  and  was  for  a  while  an   important  item  in 


Fig.  43.  —  WooDViLLE:   Reading  the  News,  National  Academy  uf  Design. 

the  art  life  of  the  city.  That  was  intended  to  be  carried  on  as  an 
exhibition  and  sales  gallery,  in  which  work  by  the  best  men  of  the 
school  were  to  be  seen.  Their  first  catalogue  shows  the  names  of 
Hasenclever,  Schrodter,  Camphausen,  both  the  Achenbachs,  besides 
some  old  paintings.     From  now  on  the  importation  of  foreign  can- 


2IO  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

vases  steadily  increased.  The  opening  exhibition  of  tlie  Brooklyn 
AthencCLim  in  1856  had  many  works  by  English  and  German 
artists,  and  two  pencil  drawings  by  Ingres.  Exerywhere  art  dealers 
multiplied.  The  effect  of  all  this  was  on  the  whole  beneficial  to 
American  art.  The  new  work  increased  the  general  interest  in 
painting,  and  the  growing  wealth  of  the  community  was  sufificient 
for  the  patronage  of  both  schools.  The  native  artists  learned 
much  from  the  foreign  tccJiniquc,  nor  was  the  comparison  too 
humiliating  to  them.  In  figures,  in  costume  pieces,  and  all  the 
varieties  of  geiwc  they  were  certainly  inferior;  but  the  German 
work,  careful,  thorough,  laborious,  still  lacked  distinction  of  concep- 
tion, color,  or  drawing;  and  even  against  the  French  figure  work 
(and  the  best  French  work  did  not  come  at  first)  the  local  painters 
with  their  personal  reputation  and  their  knowledge  of  the  buyers' 
taste  could  successfully  compete,  while  in  landscape  they  held  them- 
selves inferior  to  none.  Sales  increased,  prices  rose,  the  demand 
seemed  inexhaustible. 

The  third  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  century  is  still  looked  back 
to  as  the  golden  age  of  American  painting.  The  artists  were  an 
important  element  in  the  social  life  of  the  city.  The  population 
had  increased  enormously,  but  there  was  no  leisure  class,  and  those 
who  cared  for  art  or  culture  were  few,  and  more  or  less  in  touch  with 
each  other.  There  were  no  such  general  means  for  gratifying  taste 
as  at  present.  Photography  was  still  imperfectly  developed,  and  its 
copies  of  pictures  were  bad,  and  usually  made  from  engravings 
rather  than  the  originals.  Art  books  and  art  magazines,  as  we 
understand  them  to-day,  were  utterly  lacking.  There  was  much 
writing  about  art;  but  the  woodcuts  with  which  the  theories  were 
illustrated  were  incapable  of  conveying  any  just  idea  of  the  origi- 
nals. Foreign  travel  was  still  a  serious  undertaking  and  confined 
to  a  few,  and  the  adventurous  man  who  had  pushed  as  far  as 
Munich  or  Rome  was  listened  to  with  interest  and  respect  when 
he  recounted  his  strange  experiences. 

The  early  artists  had  mostly  travelled  and  studied  abroad,  and 
had  a  touch  of  cosmopolitan  culture.  The  business  man  who  cared 
for  something  beyond  mere  trading  thought  it  no  slight  privilege 
on  his  way  up  town  after  the  day's  work  to  be  able  to  stop  at  the 


FIGURE    PAINTINC;   IN    NEW   YORK  21 1 

studios  in  Tcntli  Street  or  tlic  old  University  Building,  and  pass 
an  hour  in  a  congenial  atmosphere;  and  when  those  buildings  gave 
a  general  reception,  the  streets  in  front  were  blocked  with  jDrivate 
carriages  —  and  private  carriages  were  less  common  in  those  days 
than  now.  Nor  was  this  friendship  of  the  merchant  an  empty 
thing.  He  aided  the  beginners,  he  bought  his  friends'  pictures, 
spread  their  merits,  defended  their  renown  against  all  comers,  took 
their  advice  in  art  matters,  and  was  liberal  toward  their  institutions. 
It  was  provincial,  undeveloped,  unsophisticated,  the  New  York  of 
Civil  Wartimes;  but  it  is  not  surprising  that  the  old  artists  look 
back  to  it  through  the  mist  of  years  as  to  an  Eden,  the  like  of 
which  cannot  occur  again. 

The  annalist  of  this  period  is  Tuckerman,  as  Dunlap  w^as  of  the 
earlier  colonial  time,  but  the  Book  of  the  Artists,  published  in 
1S67,  is  not  the  equal  of  the  History  of  the  Arts  of  Desiou  in 
America.  It  is  badly  arranged,  without  sense  of  proportion  or 
clearness  of  statement,  long-winded,  and  stuffed  through  and 
through  wdth  purple  patches  of  fine  writing.  There  are  intermi- 
nable descriptions  of  scenery,  analyses  of  emotions,  reflections  on 
morals,  on  science,  on  history,  and  a  wealth  of  poetic  quotation, 
original  and  selected,  most  blameless  and  unreadable,  while  over 
each  artist  is  poured  the  same  buttery  vial  of  praise  of  his  blameless 
character,  his  sensitive  mind,  his  perfect  work.  In  short,  the  whole 
thing  savors  strongly  of  Godcy  s  Ladies''  Book,  in  which  portions  of 
it  first  appeared,  and  the  reader  longs  for  old  Dunlap's  clear  narra- 
tive and  frank  admissions  of  poor  work,  unreliability,  bad  temper, 
and  excess.  And  yet  Tuckerman,  when  the  tawdry  ornament  is 
cleared  away,  has  the  pith  of  the  matter  in  him.  He  knew^  the 
artists  well,  enjoyed  their  society,  admired  their  works,  and  revered 
their  characters.  He  had  looked  much  at  art  and  thought  much 
about  it  in  a  rather  hazy,  sentimental  way.  He  knew  his  surround- 
ings, the  social  and  business  life  about  him,  and  he  felt  the  need 
for  a  nobler,  ampler  culture  to  balance  the  spreading  commercialism. 
He  knew  the  difificulties  of  the  artists,  their  isolation,  the  uncertain- 
ties of  patronage,  the  lack  of  just  appreciation,  the  material  difificul- 
ties of  studios  and  models,  and  all  the  machinery  of  art,  and  for 
all  he  had  ample  sympathy.     He  was  not  an  advanced  critic.      His 


2  12  HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

judcrments  were  the  judgments  of  his  time,  and  many  of  them  have 
been  reversed;  but  for  us  it  is  rather  a  merit,  for  he  voices  the  con- 
temporarv  point  of  view,  and  if  we  wish  to  know  the  manner  of 
men  for  whom  our  artists  worked  in  the  sixties,  their  enthusiasms, 
their  sentimentality,  their  Hmitations,  we  can  find  it  all  reflected  m 
the  pages  of  Tuckerman. 


DUKAXD  :     LANDSCAPE,    LENOX    LIBRARY. 


rather  a  merit,  for  he  voices  tht 

artists  worked   m   tiic  sixuc.,  uicu    ciuiK.Mar^n,-. 
,  th( 
the  pa-:-  "i   xL.cke-- 


litv,  their  limitations,  we -'-   ^--^  '*•  ^^^   n-flrrtad  ir 


.YHAHHU    X'^'^'ii      -IT/O^^aZAJ     :(l/.A>iya 


CHAPTER    XII 

BEGINNINGS   OF   LANDSCAPE   PAINTING 

The  Growth  of  a  Landscape  School.  —  Early  Work.  —  Thomas  Doughty.  —  Asher 
Brown  Durand.  —  His  Youth  —  Character  of  his  Work  as  an  Engraver. — 
Begins  painting  Portraits.  —  Trip  abroad.  —  Landscape  Work.  —  Thomas 
Cole.  —  Early  Life.  —  Comes  to  New  York.  —  Success.  —  Later  Years. — 
Character  of  his  Work. —  Character  of  Durand's  Work  as  a  Painter 

The  noteworthy  characteristic  of  the  period  just  described  was 
the  new  development  of  landscape  painting.  It  had  always  been 
practised.  There  is  a  record  that  Smybert  left  landscapes  among 
his  other  pictures  when  he  died ;  it  was  a  landscape  that  the  artist 
Williams  showed  to  West,  and  the  youthful  Benjamin  himself  tried 
his  hand  in  the  same  direction.  Constantly  we  find  mention  of  other 
examples,  but  practically  all  these  have  disappeared.  The  land- 
scapes which  Allston  painted  while  an  undergraduate  are  about  the 
earliest  which  survive  and  probably  resemble  their  precursors  in 
being  ideal  in  character,  at  least  to  the  extent  of  being  constructed  in 
the  mind  in  accordance  with  ideas  gained  from  pictures  and  prints 
rather  than  from  any  immediate  study  of  nature.  Allston  later 
painted  other  landscapes  with  more  skill,  but  always  in  accordance 
with  European  tradition,  and  by  that  time  the  native  American 
school  had  already  begun,  its  chief  characteristics  (forced  on  it  by 
necessity  rather  than  adopted  by  choice)  being  its  ignorance  of 
European  composition  and  handling  and  its  literal  study  of  the 
scenery  about  it.  The  earliest  of  this  school  was  Thomas  Doughty, 
born  in  1793  and  who  lived  until  1856.  He  began  painting  rather 
late  in  life,  giving  up  his  business  as  a  leather  manufacturer  for  it, 
and  has  been  mentioned  already  as  one  of  the  quartette  (Harding, 
Alexander,  and  Fisher  being  the  others)  who  held  an  exceptionally 
successful  exhibition  in  Boston  in  1831.  Doughty 's  pictures  are 
transcripts  of  the  nature  he  saw,  small  and  unassuming,  with  no 
trace  of  foreign  models,  but  their  luminous,  milky  skies  and  violet 
N^^s^V  213 

\ 


2  14  HISTORY  OF  ami:ricax  talntlng 

distances  have  a  peculiar  personal  charm.  One  would  think  that 
he  must  have  enjoyed  painting  them,  but  we  know  that  his  h'fc  was 
unhappv  and  that  his  lack  of  pecuniary  success  rendered  him  mor- 
bidly despondent. 

Fisher  and  Alexander  also  had  painted  landscapes  until  the  want 
of  patronage  drove  them  to  portraits  and  so  had  In  man  and  others, 
but  the  real  founders  of  the  school  (for  Doughty  was  but  a  pre- 
cursor) were  Durand  and  Cole,  who  stand  to  it  in  much  the  same 
relation  that  Copley  and  West  do  to  the  early  portraitists.  Durand, 
born  in  1796,  was  the  elder  by  five  years,  his  father  of  old  Huguenot 
stock  being  a  farmer  in  New  Jersey  and  his  mother  a  daughter 
of  one  of  the  Dutch  families  of  the  neighborhood.  The  elder 
Durand  managed  his  small  farm  on  the  slope  of  Orange  Mountain, 
but  was  in  addition  a  watch-maker  and  silversmith,  and  had  a 
mechanical  in^enuitv  that  enabled  him  to  turn  his  hand  to  anv- 
thing.  He  could  build  an  oven  or  plaster  a  well,  and  he  made  a 
brass  gun  unaided,  inventing  the  necessary  tools.  He  is  credibly 
reported  to  have  manufactured  from  the  rough,  nineteen  barrels  in 
a  single  day,  and  when  Washington,  reconnoitring  on  Orange 
Mountain  behind  the  farm,  broke  his  field-glass,  the  skilful  farmer 
was  called  on  and  successfully  repaired  it. 

Much  of  this  industry  and  ingenuity  the  son,  Asher  Brown 
Durand  (the  eighth  of  eleven  children),  seems  to  have  inherited. 
His  father  and  two  of  his  elder  brothers  were  accustomed  to  engrave 
monograms  and  devices  on  the  objects  manufactured  by  them,  but 
the  boy,  excited  by  his  admiration  of  the  woodcuts  in  his  school 
books,  attempted  more  ambitious  subjects,  inventing  his  own 
gravers  and  beating  out  co])per  cents  for  his  ])lates.  These  efforts 
led  to  his  being  apprenticed  to  an  engraver.  W.  S.  Leney,  the  most 
prominent  practitioner  in  New  York,  demanded  a  premium  of  $1000, 
which  was  far  beyond  Durand's  means;  but  arrangements  were 
finally  made  with  Peter  Maverick,  son  of  Peter  R.  Maverick,  also  an 
engraver,  who  lived  near  Newark,  only  some  seven  miles  from  the 
Durand  farm,  and  he  served  him  five  years  as  an  ap])rentice,  at  the 
end  of  which  time  he  became  of  age  and  was  taken  into  a  partner- 
shij).  His  first  engraving  from  a  painting  (a  head  of  an  old 
beggar    by   Waldo)   was    seen    by    Trumbull,    who   was   seeking  an 


FIG.   44.  — DOUGHTY:    RIVER   GLIMRSE,    METROPOLITAN   MUSEUM. 


BEGINNINGS   OF    LANDSCAPE    PAINTING  217 

engraver  for  his  "  Declaration  of  Independence."  James  Heath 
of  London  demanded  $6000  for  the  plate.  Durand  was  glad  to 
undertake  it  for  half  that  amount,  and  when  Maverick  wished  to  be 
joined  in  the  commission,  Trumbull  demurred  and  the  partnership 
which  had  lasted  three  years  was  dissolved.  The  next  three  years 
were  devoted  to  this  plate,  which  was  finished  in  1S23.  It  was  a 
daring  experiment  to  intrust  so  large  and  difficult  a  subject  to 
so  inexperienced  and  }'oung  an  engraver,  and  Durand  was  always 
grateful  to  Trumbull  for  his  confidence  ;  but  the  result  justified  it. 

Although  the  plate  was  hardly  remunerative  and  the  sale  of  the 
prints  was  slow,  it  was  an  artistic  success  and  finally  established 
Durand  s  reputation  as  an  engraver.  For  the  next  dozen  years  he 
was  fully  employed.  Much  of  the  work  was  purely  commercial  ; 
business  cards,  lottery  tickets,  diplomas,  and  especially  bank  notes, 
for  the  production  of  which  he  formed  a  partnership  with  his  elder 
brother  and  designed  many  graceful  vignettes  ;  but  he  also  produced 
a  great  number  of  other  plates,  chiefly  portraits  of  divines  and  actors, 
heroes  of  the  War  of  181 2,  and  race-horses,  ending  with  a  "  Musi- 
dora "  and  the  "Ariadne  "  of  Vanderlyn.  In  these  Durand  shows 
himself  a  thoroughly  competent  engraver;  he  had  studied  dili- 
gently the  best  prints  he  could  procure  and  had  mastered  a  variety 
of  technique  from  the  cross  hatching  of  the  school  of  Raphael 
Morghen  to  the  stipple  of  Bartolozzi.  Mezzotint  he  attempted 
but  once  and  then  did  not  finish  the  plate.  His  drawing  is  good, 
his  line  clear  and  strong,  and  faithfully  reproduces  his  models.  That 
his  work  has  so  little  interest  is  due  mainly  to  this  last  virtue.  If 
fortune  had  given  him  the  compositions  of  Reynolds  or  Lawrence 
to  work  from,  his  prints  might  now  be  disputed  by  collectors  in  the 
sales ;  but  the  heads  by  Waldo  or  Neagle  which  were  for  the  most 
part  his  portion,  were  calculated  neither  to  increase  his  fame  nor  his 
skill.  On  the  few  occasions  when  he  had  an  opportunity  for  better 
things  he  acquitted  himself  honorably.  His  plate  of  the  signing 
of  the  "  Declaration  of  Independence  "  has  no  such  delicacy  or  refine- 
ment as  the  "  Battle  of  Bunker  Hill  "  by  Miiller,  but  the  comparison 
with  the  mature  work  of  one  of  the  most  skilled  European  practi- 
tioners is  not  overwhelming  to  the  American  novice.  The  "  Musi- 
dora  "  is  filled  with  work  of  exquisite  delicacy,  but  the  design,  made 


2i8  HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

bv  Durand  himself,  probably  without  a  model,  is  a  boneless,  impos- 
sible thing;  the  "Ariadne,"  on  the  contrary,  his  latest  work,  gives 
admirably  the  character  of  the  original  with  much  subtle  varying 
of  handling,  while  a  certain  coarse  literalness  of  form  is  inherent 
in  the  picture  itself  and  is  mitigated  rather  than  enhanced  by  the 
engra\'er, 

W^ith  the  "Ariadne,"  finished  in  1835,  his  work  as  an  engraver 
practically  stops.  He  had  already  painted  a  number  of  heads,  but 
in  that  year  received  commissions  from  Luman  Reed  and  Charles 
Augustus  Davis  to  go  to  Washington  and  make  portraits  of  General 
Jackson  and  Henry  Clay,  and  he  acquitted  himself  so  well  that  he 
received  an  order  from  Reed  for  heads  of  all  the  Presidents,  done 
when  possible  from  nature,  the  others  copied  after  Stuart  and  others. 
From  now  on  he  was  a  painter  producing  portraits,  figure  pieces, 
and  some  landscapes  until  1840,  when  he  made  his  only  trip  abroad, 
visiting  London  and  the  principal  continental  cities  and  passing  the 
winter  in  Italy,  studying  the  galleries,  copying  Titian,  Rembrandt, 
and  the  other  old  masters,  and  doing  some  original  work.  On  his 
return  the  next  year  he  abandoned  more  and  more  figure  work  to 
devote  himself  to  landscape,  which  he  practised  continuously  until  in 
his  eighty-third  year  he  said,  "  My  hand  will  no  longer  do  my  bidding," 
and  laid  down  his  brush  forever,  passing  the  last  seven  years  of  his 
life  on  the  Orange  Mountain  farm  where  he  was  born,  in  peaceful 
communion  with  the  nature  that  he  loved. 

The  early  life  of  Thomas  Cole  is  in  contrast  to  the  steady,  quiet 
tenor  of  that  of  Durand.  He  was  born  in  England  of  a  family  partly 
American  and  did  not  cross  the  ocean  until  he  was  in  his  nineteenth 
year,  but  he  became  in  after  life  so  good  an  American  that  he  declared 
that  he  would  give  his  left  hand  ta  be  identified  with  the  country  by 
birth.  Cole's  father  seems  to  have  been  a  gentle,  high-minded  man, 
without  much  energy  or  business  capacity.  He  was  unsuccessful  in 
England  and  transported  his  family  to  Philadel])hia,  where  he  set  up 
a  small  dry-goods  store;  but  failing  at  the  business  or  tiring  of  it,  he 
moved  westward  again  to  Steubenville  in  the  Alleghanies. 

In  this  migration  Cole  was  left  behind.  I  le  had  already  worked 
at  wood  engraving  in  Liveipool  and  had  found  employment  in  Phila- 
del]3hia,  so  he  remained  there  with  the  exception  of  a  trip  to  the  West 


FIG.   45.  — DURAND:    JAMES    MADISON,    CEXTURV    ASSOCIATION. 


BEGINNINGS   OF   LANDSCAPE   PAINTING  221 

Indies  until  the  following  summer,  when  he  set  out  on  foot  and 
rejoined  his  family  at  Steubenville  and  remained  there  nearly  two 
years,  helping  his  father  in  a  wall-paper  manufactory  that  he  had 
established.  His  ambition  for  higher  things  was  aroused  by  the  visit 
of  an  itinerant  portrait  painter  to  the  village,  who  talked  with  him, 
showed  him  his  work,  and  loaned  him  an  English  book  on  painting, 
very  Hkely,  from  the  description,  of  that  same  Richardson,  which  had 
been  potent  with  so  many  beginners.  When  the  artist  left.  Cole  pro- 
cured colors  from  a  chair-maker,  manufactured  some  brushes,  and 
proceeded  to  turn  out  the  usual  early  efforts.  In  his  case  they  were 
at  first  landscapes,  but  these  being  unremunerative,  his  family  were 
pressed  in  as  models,  a  few  recognizable  likenesses  were  made,  and  in 
February  of  1822,  when  Cole  was  just  of  age,  he  started  out  on  foot, 
with  his  materials  in  a  bag  on  his  shoulder  to  emulate  the  other 
wandering  artists  of  whom  the  country  was  full.  It  was  too  full  of 
them  for  his  profit,  for  at  the  villages  where  he  stopped  he  found  he 
had  been  preceded  by  a  German  who  had  exhausted  the  available 
patronage.  Cole  succeeded  in  surpassing  him  to  such  an  extent 
that  he  was  called  in  to  improve  his  rival's  work,  and  when  they 
met  a  truce  was  arranged  on  the  basis  suggested  by  his  rival :  "  If 
you  will  say  notink  apout  ma  bigtures,  I  will  say  notink  apout 
yours." 

Finally  the  German  saw  a  new  opening  and  deserted  art  for 
preaching,  but  even  this  did  not  bring  prosperity  to  Cole.  There 
was  little  work  and  that  badly  paid,  the  hardships  of  travel  were 
great,  and  the  company  he  was  forced  to  keep  uncongenial.  He  ran 
into  debt  at  a  tavern,  was  in  danger  of  imprisonment  and  returned 
to  Steubenville,  owing  money  which  he  strove  vainly  during  the  winter 
to  repay.  The  next  spring  he  followed  his  family  to  Pittsburg  and 
aided  his  father  at  his  new  occupation,  the  making  of  floor  cloths, 
working  also  at  painting,  but  now  resuming  landscape  and  making 
careful  drawings  from  nature.  In  the  autumn  he  determined  defi- 
nitely  to  be  an  artist  at  any  cost,  and  set  out  for  Philadelphia,  where 
he  passed  a  fearful  winter  alone,  living  on  bread  and  water,  almost 
frozen  by  the  cold,  sleeping  on  the  floor  wrapped  in  a  cloth  table- 
cover,  which  served  him  also  as  an  overcoat,  and  suffering  from  a 
severe  attack  of  inflammatory  rheumatism.     Under  these  conditions 


222  HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

lie  drew  at  the  Academy,  jDainted  landscapes  from  drawings  he  had 
made,  and  was  especially  productive  in  comic  scenes. 

The  next  winter,  though  trying,  was  not  so  severe,  and  in  the  fol- 
lowing spring  of  1825  he  came  to  New  York  and  his  privations  were 
at  an  end.  He  had  borne  them  courageously,  yet  he  had  suffered 
acutely  under  them,  and  in  his  future  prosperity  did  not  refer  to  them 
as  one  who  rejoices  to  remember  })ast  woes,  but  rather  in  a  tone  of  self- 
commiseration  ;  for  Cole  was  of  a  delicate  temperament,  abnormally 
sensitive  and  bashful,  a  being  of  sensibility  who  wrote  poetry,  and 
solaced  his  griefs  by  playing  the  flute.  When  he  first  came  to 
Philadelphia  he  grieved  over  "the  rudeness  and  indelicacy  of  his 
employer,  who  called  him  a  woodcutter,  speaking  lightly  of  his  craft 
and  wounding  his  sensitive  mind;"  and  the  drunken  teamsters  and 
barroom  loafers  whom  he  was  forced  to  meet  in  his  travels  tor- 
tured him.  A  more  strenuous  type  of  character  is  at  present 
popular;  but  Cole's  emotional  nature  and  the  singular  purity  of 
his  mind  made  him  friends,  and  his  shyness  forced  him  into  a  more 
intimate  communion  with  nature. 

On  his  arrival  in  New  York  he  showed  five  small  canvases, 
which  were  promptly  bought  for  about  ten  dollars  each ;  and  shortly 
after  three  others,  displayed  in  Paff's  window,  were  seen  by  Colonel 
Trumbull,  who  bought  one  of  them,  sought  out  the  young  painter, 
and  introduced  him  to  Dunlap  and  Durand,  who  bought  the  other 
two  and  welcomed  the  newcomer  with  generous  enthusiasm.  From 
this  time,  as  Durand  says,  "  his  fame  spread  like  fire,"  and  he  entered 
on  an  era  of  uninterrupted  prosperity.  He  at  first  passed  his  win- 
ters in  New  York  (to  which  one  more  removal  had  brought  his 
family),  going  into  the  country  to  sketch  during  the  sumnier.  But 
he  wished  for  foreign  study  and  went  abroad  in  1829,  remaining 
over  three  years,  nearly  two  of  which  were  spent  in  England,  where 
he  worked  industriously  and  mourned  over  the  way  his  pictures 
were  hung  in  the  London  exhibitions.  Afterward  he  went  to  Italy, 
first  to  Morence,  where  he  lived  in  the  same  house  with  Greenough, 
the  sculptor,  and  then  to  Rome  and  Naples,  sketching  and  painting 
everywhere,  and  studying  the  old  ])ictures,  but  seldom  making  a 
copy.  He  married  most  ha])pily  in  1836,  and  in  1841  made  his  sec- 
ond trip  to  Italy,  staying  a  year  and  leaving  his  family  in  New  York. 


FIG.   46.  — DURAND:    IN   THE   WOODS,   METROPOLITAN    MUSEUM. 


BEGINNIN(;S   OF    LANDSCAPE    PAINTING 


225 


He  seems  to  have  liaci  some  hopes  of  olDtaining  the  Roman  consulate  ; 
but  they  came  to  nothing,  and  he  never  went  abroad  again,  dividing 
his  time  between  New  York,  various  trips  that  he  made  in  search  of 
landscape,  and  the  Catskills,  where  he  had  had  a  studio  from  1827, 
and  where  he  finally  died  in  1848  at  the  age  of  forty-seven.  Thus 
he  did  not  see  the  fortunate  days  that  followed  ;  while  Durand,  an 
older  man  by  five  years,  both  saw  and  survived  them.  The  old 
White  Mountain,  Hudson  River  school  had  been  born,  had  flour- 
ished, and  had  fallen  out  of  fashion,  the  new  taste  for  foreign  work 
had  arisen,  the  young  men  had  deserted  to  the  new  gods  of  Paris 
and  Munich,  had  studied,  returned  home,  and  finally  established 
their  new  views,  struggling  not  against  their  native  predecessors,  but 
against  their  foreign  masters  before  the  veteran  went  to  his  rest  in 
1886. 

These  long  lives,  traversing  so  many  stages  of  development,  often 
make  it  difficult  to  put  each  man  in  his  proper  place,  but  Durand's 
position  is  that  of  founder  of  the  landscape  school.  Joined  with  him 
is  Cole,  who,  although  a  younger  man,  preceded  him  in  landscape 
work,  for  Durand  was  still  an  engraver  when  Cole  came  to  New 
York ;  and  even  when  ten  years  later  Durand  turned  to  painting,  he 
did  not  devote  himself  to  landscape  until  a  few  years  before  Cole's 
death,  and  then  in  a  style  and  with  a  feeling  not  at  all  resembling 
that  of  his  friend.  The  pair  have  already  been  compared  as  founders 
to  West  and  Copley,  and  like  them  they  represent  the  contrast 
between  the  emotional  and  literal  temperament.  Like  W^est,  Cole 
strove  to  achieve  high  moral  objects  through  his  art.  It  was  to  sug- 
gest profitable  musings  on  the  grandeur  and  decline  of  nations,  the 
transitoriness  of  human  life,  the  rewards  of  virtue  after  death.  The 
plot  of  his  best-known  pictures  can  be  related  like  that  of  a  play,  and 
like  a  play  usually  required  several  acts  for  its  exposition.  The 
series  of  the  "  Course  of  Empire  "  represented  the  same  harbor  sur- 
rounded by  mountains,  and  followed  its  fortunes  through  five  scenes, 
as  a  city  was  built  up,  grew  to  wealth,  was  sacked  by  the  enemy,  and 
sank  into  ruins.  The  "  Voyage  of  Life "  gave  in  four  canvases 
infancy,  youth,  manhood,  and  old  age,  drifting  on  an  allegorical 
Stream  of  Time.  The  "  Departure"  and  the  "  Return"  represent  a 
knight  leaving  his  castle  in  the  morning  with  floating  banners  and 
Q 


226  HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    rAlXTIXG 

prancing  steeds  and  brought  back  at  night  dead.  There  were  series 
of  "  Life,  Death,  and  ImmortaHty,"  of  the  "  Cross  and  the  World," 
and  such  like,  which  he  planned  but  did  not  live  to  complete. 

These  allegories  were  in  the  taste  of  the  day  and  were  enormously 
popular.  Luman  Reed,  for  whom  the  "Course  of  Empire""  was 
painted,  generously  doubled  the  agreed  price  of  fifteen  hundred  dol- 
lars, and  when  the  "Voyage  of  Life"  was  secured  by  the  Art  Union, 
its  subscriptions  increased  amazingly  ;  but  in  all  these  Cole  was  study- 
ing to  find  visual  symbols  for  ideas  better  expressed  in  words.  Like 
"West,  he  was  studying  for  edification,  and  pure  painting  was  neglected. 
In  the  Cr^ayon  of  1856  there  is  (probably  by  W.  J.  Stillman,  to  judge  by 
the  Ruskinian  touches)  a  sound  criticism  of  the  "Voyage  of  Life," 
a propos  of  the  engravings  just  published  by  James  Smillie.  "  As  land- 
scapes the  pictures  are  false,  artificial,  and  conventional,  and  far  below 
the  standard  he  aimed  at  in  his  pure  landscape  painting.  There  is  not, 
we  believe,  in  the  whole  series,  one  object  in  which  we  can  find  that 
Cole  was  reverent  toward  those  truths  which  it  is  made  the  duty  of 
the  landscape  painter  to  tell  us  (which  in  fact  he  never  was,  even 
when  he  professed  only  to  paint  a  landscape);  rocks,  trees,  and  shrubs 
fall  alike  under  the  censure  of  a  student  of  Nature." 

This  is  true  enough,  and  the  "  Course  of  Empire  "  was  worse 
painted  than  the  "Voyage  of  Life."  If  these  were  his  only  works, 
his  position  would  be  quite  different  from  what  it  is  ;  but  he  really 
loved  the  wild,  untamed  country,  the  mountains,  forests,  and  streams 
of  New  York  and  New  England,  and  he  painted  them  with  a 
truer  feeling.  His  work  even  then  is  thin  and  dry  and  painted 
in  his  studio  from  sketches;  but  he  was  the  first  to  give  the  char- 
acter of  our  landscape,  the  hills  wooded  to  the  top,  the  clear  lakes, 
the  crystalline  air.  His  smaller  pictures,  both  American  and  Italian, 
are  his  best;  but  his  big  canvases,  like  the  "Oxbow,"  with  its  wind- 
ing river  in  a  wide-stretched  plain  filled  full  of  niinute  detail  of 
trees  and  fences  and  houses,  with  its  coming  thunder-storm  and  its 
Salvator  Rosa  trees  in  the  foreground,  are  original  and  im])ressive, 
and  had  a  great  influence  on  his  successors.  It  is  a  ])ily  that  he 
did  not  develop  in  that  direction.  Perhaps  his  foreign  travel  was 
a  detriment.  His  technique  was  sufficiently  formed  when  he  went 
abroad,  and  his  effort  there  seems  to  have  been  not  to  paint  better. 


BEGINNINGS   OF   LANDSCAPE   PAINTING 


229 


but  to  find  nobler  subjects.  Already  on  his  return  some  of  his  old 
admirers  complained  of  the  change,  and  there  are  indications  that 
before  his  death  a  considerable  body  of  the  judicious  were  alienated 
by  his  oTowing-  insincerity  to  nature.  What  was  lacking  in  that 
respect  in  his  work  they  could  then  find  in  Durand's. 

Sincerity  is  not  the  greatest  of  the  artistic  virtues,  but  no  great 
work  is  without  it,  and  it  goes  far  to  redeem  what  otherwise  would 
be  mediocre.  It  underlies  all  of  Durand's  work,  as  it  did  Copley's,  as 
a  firm  foundation.  The  portraits  with  which  he  began  as  painter 
are  unlike  any  by  his  contemporaries.  They  suggest  some  of  the 
early  Dutchmen,  men  like  Moreelse,  in  the  thoroughness  of  their 
workmanship  and  their  lack  of  display  or  seeking  for  attention. 
They  are  all  of  men,  the  whole  interest  thrown  on  the  head,  which 
is  modelled  with  infinite  delicacy,  his  training  as  an  engraver  stand- 
ing him  in  good  stead.  They  are  the  best  work  of  the  time,  far 
better  than  his  figure  pieces.  The  "Wrath  of  Peter  Stuyvesant "  is 
amusing  now  only  because  it  is  old-fashioned,  and  the  interview 
between  Washington  and  Harvey  Birch  is  stiff  and  wooden.  There 
were  difficulties  in  the  way  of  figure  composition,  but  it  seems 
strange  that  he  should  have  deserted  portraits  for  landscape.  The 
success  of  Cole  probably  influenced  him,  and  possibly  what  he  saw 
abroad  of  Constable,  Turner,  and  Claude  opened  his  eyes  to  its  pos- 
sibilities, for  he  devoted  himself  almost  entirely  to  it  on  his  return. 
He  had  painted  landscape  before  that.  Even  in  his  engraving  days 
it  had  been  his  solace  to  go  to  the  Elysian  Fields  and  study  from 
nature,  and  his  technique  was  formed  from  the  first  and  hardly 
changed  during  his  long  life. 

Like  his  portraits,  his  landscapes  were  his  own,  and  not  to  be 
mistaken  for  those  of  another  man.  He  was  too  good  a  craftsman  to 
tolerate  any  of  the  slipshod  work  of  Cole  —  everything  is  finished 
clearly  and  definitely.  His  canvases  have  a  silvery  gray  tone,  very 
true  to  what  the  eye  sees  on  a  clear  summer  day,  after  the  bright 
light  has  dulled  its  sensitiveness  to  strong  color.  His  wood  inte- 
riors are  naturally  richer ;  but  his  shadows  are  true  to  the  local  color 
and  not  of  the  warm  brown  used  both  by  Cole  and  by  many  of  his 
successors,  and  this  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  from  the  way  some  of  his 
pictures  have  cracked  he  must  have  painted  on  a  foundation  of  bitu- 


2  30 


HISTORY    OF    AM1;RI(AX     I'AIXTING 


men  or  something  of  the  sort.  Tlie  siKcry  tone  must  have  come 
from  the  fact  that  he  worked  largely  out  of  doors,  not  making  studies 
only,  but  })ainting  directly  on  his  final  picture,  a  practice  exceptional 
at  the  time.  The  earlier  men,  Claude  for  example,  liad  occasionally 
done  so,  and  Turner  made  infinite  water-color  sketches  in  the  open 
air;  but  his  great  oil  paintings  were  essentially  studio  works,  as  were 
landscapes  generally  before  Constable.  Constable  himself,  indepen- 
dent as  he  was,  and  painting  much  out  of  doors,  yet  was  influenced 
bv  the  old  masterpieces  which  surrounded  him  and  which  he  studied 


I'll..  48.  —  CoLt,:    Roman  Ai^ilkduct,  Metropolitan  MusEUiM. 


and  copied,  and  also  by  the  strong  atid  rich  coloring  of  the  English 
portraits  of  his  day,  beside  which  his  own  were  hung  in  the 
exhil^itions. 

Durand  had  no  such  knowledge  of  the  ffreat  traditions  of  art  to 
fall  back  on.  He  had  no  feeling  for  the  balance  of  line  and  spot 
and,  without  any  desire  to  be  an  innovator,  his  surroundings  and 
his  study  from  nature  forced  a  new  composition  on  him  if  that  may 
be  called  composition  which  is  principally  lack  of  it.  His  pictures 
are  largely  great  sketches  or  studies  from  nature.  A  fine  view,  a 
pretty  fall  in  a  brook,  perhaps  only  a  rock  or  a  great  tree,  is  taken  in 


BEGINNINGS   OF    LANDSCAPE    PAINTING  231 

its  most  favorable  aspect  and  enough  of  the  contiguous  detail  added 
to  fill  up  the  can\as.  The  composition  never  perfectly  fits  the  frame, 
and  sometimes  it  does  not  fit  it  at  all.  The  charm  is  in  the  detail. 
The  acute  engraver's  eye  and  unhurried  hand  has  gone  over  every 
object,  not  perfunctorily,  but  with  loving  interest.  The  wooded  hills, 
the  silvery  lakes,  the  rocks  with  their  twisted  veins  and  gray  lichens, 
the  leaves  of  the  trees,  the  corrugations  of  their  bark,  the  pebbles 
in  the  brook  —  there  is  enthusiasm  for  all.  There  is  no  such  deep 
emotion  as  broods  over  Inness's  work,  or  that  of  some  of  our  later 
men,  but  there  disengages  itself  the  feeling  of  peace  and  rest  which 
came  to  a  strong,  simple  mind  from  the  intimate  communion  with 
nature. 


CHAPTER    XIII 

THE    HUDSON    RIVER    SCHOOL 

Development  of  the  Hudson  River  School  as  illustrating  a  Citation  from 
Goethe.  —  All  studied  more  or  less  abroad. —^Kensett.  —  Casilear. — 
Bristol.  —  Cropsev. — T.  Addison  Richards.  —  William  T.  Richards.  —  Whit- 
tredge.  —  McEntee.  —  Sandford  R.  Gifford.  —  F.  E.  Church.  —  Bierstadt. — 
Mignot.  —  Moran.  —  Bradford.  —  Philadelphia  and  Boston  Artists.  —  George 
L.  Brown.  —  Characteristics  of  the  School 

DuRAND  came  late  in  life  to  landscape  work,  and  the  men  who 
joined  themselves  to  him  were  much  younger:  Casilear,  born  in  iSii, 
served  a  preliminary  apprenticeship  as  engraver  with  Maverick  and 
later  with  Durand  before  taking  up  painting,  and  John  F.  Kensett, 
who  was  the  first  to  begin  as  painter,  was  born  in  i8i8,  and  was 
consequently  twenty-two  years  Durand's  junior;  two  years  later  came 
T.  Addison  Richards  and  Whittredge  and  then  Cropsey,  Bristol, 
Sandford  R.  Gifford,  George  Inness,  F.  E.  Church,  Bierstadt,  Mc- 
Entee, in  the  order  named,  the  last  two  in  1S28.  The  younger  men 
saw  the  light  in  the  thirties,  —  William  Bradford,  Mignot,  Samuel 
Colman,  William  T.  Richards,  Homer  D.  Martin,  Wyant,  Thomas 
Moran,  and  last,  in  1840,  R,  Swain  Gifford.  Some  of  these  men  had 
direct  instruction  from  Cole  or  Durand  or  from  each  other.  More 
commonly  there  was  no  relation  of  master  and  pu])il ;  but  they  all 
more  or  less  knew  each  other  intimately,  worked  together,  aided 
each  other,  exhibited  their  works  together,  and  appealed  to  the  same 
public. 

One  section  of  them  formed  what  is  called  the  Hudson  River  or 
the  White  Mountain  school.  A  school  in  art  has  been  defined  as 
"a  coml)ination  of  traditions  and  methods,  a  Ay7////V/;/<',  a  particular 
feeling  in  design,  a  particular  sense  of  color  also,  all  united  together 
to  express  a  common  ideal  followed  by  the  artists  of  a  given  nation 
at  a  sfiven  time."  Put  for  "  traditions  and  methods  "  a  common  lack 
of    them,  and    the   definition   would   fit  this  group  sufficiently  well. 


FIG.    49.  — KENSE'rr:    WHITE   MOUNTAIN   SCENERY,   LENOX    LIIiRARV. 


THE    HUDSON    RIVIOR    SCHOOL  235 

They  were  tlie  primitives,  the  men  who  followed  most  closely  the 
ideals  of  Cole  and  1  )urand.  They  had  like  ideas  and  aspirations. 
They  all  worked  much  out  of  doors  and  had  a  great  faith  in  nature 
literally  and  minutely  copied.  They  had  a  great  personal  delight 
also  in  the  American  country.  Apart  from  their  work  it  was  a  joy  to 
them  to  walk  in  the  woods,  climb  the  mountains,  and  breathe  the 
clear,  dry  air.  They  gloried  in  the  boundless  views  of  the  Hudson 
Valley  seen  from  the  Catskills.  They  accompanied  the  first  explorers 
into  the  wilds  of  the  Rockies  and  the  Yellowstone.  They  thought 
that  the  size  of  the  great  lakes,  the  mighty  rivers,  and  the  boundless 
prairies  must  reflect  itself  in  the  greatness  of  the  national  art.  They 
were  patriotic,  boasted  themselves  to  be  the  first  really  native  school 
(which  was  true),  and  spared  an  incredulous  Europe  not  one  jot  of 
the  blazing  vermilion  of  the  autumn  foliage. 

Some  of  the  men  as  they  matured  and  attained  wider  knowledge 
and  greater  skill  followed  ampler  ideals,  some  remained  true  to  the 
simple  early  faith  and  frowned  at  the  laxity  and  heresies  of  their  suc- 
cessors. ^The  development  of  American  landscape  art  as  a  whole 
follows  with  absolute, exactness  the  principles  laid  down  by  Goethe 
in  regard  to  the  imitation  of  nature.  "  If  an  artist  turns  to  natural 
objects,  uses  all  care  and  fidelity  in  the  most  perfect  imitation  of 
their  forms  and  color,  never  knowingly  departs  from  nature,  begins 
and  ends  in  her  presence  every  picture  that  he  undertakes  —  such 
an  artist  must  possess  high  merit,  for  he  cannot;^''fail  of  attaining  the 
greatest  accuracy,  and  his  work  must  be  full  of  certainty,  variety,  and 
strength. 

"  But  man  finds  usually  such  a  mode  of  proceeding  too  timid 
and  inadequate.  He  perceives  a  harmony  among  many  objects, 
which  can  only  be  brought  into  a  picture  by  sacrificing  the  indi- 
vidual. He  gets  tired  of  using  Nature's  letters  every  time  to  spell 
after  her.  He  invents  a  way,  devises  a  language  for  himself,  so  as 
to  express  in  his  own  fashion  the  idea  his  soul  has  attained,  and  give 
to  the  object  he  has  so  many  times  repeated  a  distinctive  form. 

"  We  see  that  this  species  of  imitation  is  applied  with  the  best 
effect,  in  cases  where  a  great  whole  comprehends  many  subordinate 
objects.  These  last  must  be  sacrificed  in  order  to  attain  the  general 
expression  of  the  whole,  as  is  the  case  in  landscape ;  for  instance, 


236  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

where  the  object  would  be  missed  if  we  attended  too  closely  to  the 
details  instead  of  keeping  in  view  the  idea  of  the  whole,"  / 

This  evolution  American  landscape  went  through,  but  not 
entirely  unaided.  Foreign  influence  helped  and  hastened.  There 
seems  to  be  an  impression  that  the  young  men  of  the  seventies  dis- 
covered modern  European  art  and  that  since  then  we  have  been  in 
bondage  to  it,  while  their  predecessors  of  the  fifties  were  a  free, 
unperverted  product  of  the  soil ;  but  in  fact  foreign  experience  was 
more  indispensable  then  than  now.  All  of  the  painters  mentioned 
above  with  the  single  exception  of  Bristol  visited  Europe  for  travel 
or  study  and  many  of  them  made  long  stays  there.  When  Durand 
went  abroad  in  1840,  Casilear,  Rossiter,  and  Kensett  went  with  him, 
and  while  the  first  two  returned  the  next  year  (though  Casilear  made 
another  trip  in  1857),  Rossiter  and  Kensett  remained  six  and  seven 
years  respectively.  Rossiter  was  a  figure  painter  and  consequently 
to  be  spoken  of  elsewhere,  though  it  may  be  remarked  that  he  too 
made  a  second  visit  abroad.  Casilear  was  a  landscapist,  showing 
clearly  the  influence  of  Cole  and  Durand  and  especially  his  training 
as  an  engraver  under  the  latter,  in  the  careful,  minute  finish  of  his 
views  of  Lake  George  or  Swiss  scenery.  Kensett  also  had  tried  the 
engraver's  trade  which  his  father  had  practised  before  him,  but  broke 
away  from  it  early  and  took  up  painting,  influenced  partly  by  Rossiter, 
who  was  of  the  same  age  and  knew  him  in  New  Haven. 

The  other  men,  too,  visited  Europe  and,  naturally,  in  widely 
different  ways,  according  to  their  tastes  and  opportunities.  Sandford 
R.  Gifford  and  McEntee  were  there  but  little;  Church  went  only 
late  in  life  and  in  search  rather  of  subjects  than  of  knowledge  of 
painting;  Inness  made  several  trips  of  from  one  to  four  years'  dura- 
tion. Bierstadt,  born  abroad,  was  brought  to  America  as  an  infant 
and  in  early  manhood  returned  to  Dlisseldorf,  his  birthplace,  for 
study,  which  place  was,  next  to  Rome,  the  {principal  objective  point 
of  the  young  artists.  Whittredge  spent  some  five  years  there  and 
nearly  as  much  in  Rome,  where  Bierstadt  also  came.  Wyant,  too, 
tried  the  Dlisseldorf  instruction,  but  had  little  enthusiasm  for  it  as 
compared  with  the  Constables  and  Turners  that  he  studied  in 
London.  Cropsey  made  two  visits  abroad,  and  on  the  second 
stayed  for  seven  years  in  England ;  there,  too,  William  T.  Richards 


FJG.    50.  — WHITTREDGE:    THE   BROOK. 


THE    HUDSON    RIVER   SCHOOL 


239 


got  much  of  his  inspiration,  and  there  Mignot  went,  though  his  visit 
was  rather  from  poHtical  than  artistic  reasons.  He  was  from  South 
Carolina  and  well  established  in  New  York;  but  at  the  outbreak  of 
the  Rebellion  he  left  for  l^ngland  and  never  returned  to  America. 
Colman,  and  later  R.  Swain  Gifford,  not  only  studied  abroad  but 
were  among  the  first  to  seek  subjects  in  Spain,  and  the  countries 
south  of  the  Mediterranean. 

.-'^All  of  these  men  (and  they  are  but  the  representatives  of  a  much 
larger  body  that  it  is  impossible  to  enumerate  by  name)  differed 
from  a  later  generation  in  that  they  were  already  practising  artists 
before  they  left  America  ;  some  were  fully  mature  in  skill  and  repu- 
tation ;  some  at  the  very  outset  of  their  career,  but  even  these  last 
had  already  painted  and  sold  pictures,  though  it  might  be  only  some 
little  canvases  disposed  of  to  the  Art  Union  for  twenty  dollars  or  so. 
They  had  already  some  idea  of  what  they  wanted  to  paint  and  how 
^^to  paint  it.  The  influence  of  whatever  foreign  academy  they  went 
to  was  less  overwhelming  (some  w^ould  say  less  thorough)  than  it 
became  later.  They  started  in  sympathy  with  the  ideals  around 
them  and  never  got  entirely  out  of  touch  with  them.  They  differed 
greatly  among  themselves  in  character  and  feeling,  nor  is  each  man's 
work  harmonious  with  itself.  The  advance,  however,  may  usually 
be  followed  from  the  specific  to  the  general,  from  the  minute  render- 
ing of  detail  to  a  larger  handling. 

Of  those  who  accepted  Durand's  point  of  view  and  painteoN^ 
American  scenery  as  they  found  it,  Kensett  is  the  most  prominent. 
He,  too,  tried  to  give  nature  exactly,  without  reference  to  the  way 
it  had  been  arranged  by  other  artists,  striving  in  Rome  to  unlearn 
what  special  school  training  he  got  in  Germany.  Unlike  Durand, 
he  worked  mainly  from  drawings  and  sketches  instead  of  directly 
from  nature,  thus  missing  the  closer  truth  of  the  earlier  man. 
Kensett's  shadows  are  usually  all  of  a  warm,  transparent  brown 
instead  of  the  varied  and  subtler  colors  of  nature,  and  his  rocks  and 
trees  are  often  made  brilliant  by  high  lights  touched  in  with  a  draw- 
ing-master's facility  but  without  absolute  faithfulness  to  the  objects 
represented.  His  handling  is  never  large  and  ample,  and  his  painting 
is  apt  to  be  thin.  In  all  of  these  respects,  though  better  than  Cole, 
he  compares  unfavorably  with   Durand.     His  superiority  lies  in   his 


240  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

wider  scope,  for  Durand  is  most  at  home  in  the  full  light  of  a 
I  summer  day,  while  all  seasons  and  hours  have  their  charm  for 
/  Kensett.  If  he  has  preferences,  it  is  for  autumn  and  for  sunset 
lio-ht,  and  these  chansiino;  liijhts  and  colors  are  represented  with 
effect  and  unity.  In  copying  the  multiplicity  of  details  of  nature 
out  of  doors  the  relative  place  and  importance  of  the  objects  is 
apt  to  be  forgotten ;  but  with  a  canvas  begun  and  finished  in  the 
studio  the  first  object  is  to  get  it  into  harmony  with  itself.  This 
harmony  most  of  Kensett's  canvases  have ;  and  often,  in  spite  of 
sharpness  of  handling  and  smallness  of  detail,  the  skies  are  very 
beautiful  and  luminous  and  the  rest  of  the  landscape  very  true  to 
them.  They  never  quite  reach  the  heights  of  some  pictures  of 
Homer  D.  Martin's  middle  period,  where  the  contrast  between  the 
execution  and  the  conception  is  the  same ;  but  like  all  of  the  work 
of  the  school  they  breathe  a  feeling  of  intimacy  with  nature  at  first 
\    hand    and    a    reflection  of    the   serene   and  kindly  character  of  the 

For  even  bevond  his  fellows,  Kensett  had  the  s^ift  of  formino; 
deep  and  lasting  friendships.  He  was  not  a  ready  talker,  his  dispo- 
sition was  rather  reserved  ;  he  often  sat  mute,  but  when  he  spoke  it 
v^as  with  understanding,  and  even  his  silence  diffused  an  atmosphere 
of  friendliness  about  him.  He  had  endured  much  of  poverty  and 
ill  health  during  his  student  years  in  Europe,  and  in  his  later  life 
this  experience  of  his  gave  him  a  special  friendliness  and  helpfulness 
to  beginners  in  their  troubles.  When  wealth  came  to  him,  he  aided 
them  generously,  for  he  was  ]Dros]Derous  and  successful  even  beyond 
the  standards  of  that  prosperous  time.  /Probably  none  of  his  con- 
temporaries received  so  ample  a  pecuniary  reward,  nor  any  of  his 
successors  who  have  done  their  work  in  America./  Church  and 
Bierstadt  may  have  sold  pictures  at  as  high  or  higher  prices,  but 
Kensett  produced  more  freely,  he  had  buyers  for  everything  that  he 
was  willing  to  sell,  and  after  his  death  the  canvases  remaining  in  his 
stud>o  realized  over  $150,000  at  i)ublic  auction  in  1873. 

^__Bristol,  stilI--wei4d^i^g-4»-day^wTriTnjlT3^imnTC^""^^ 
b^iad^was  another  of  the  men  who  kept  to  the  early  spirit  of  the  school, 
and  more  than  Kensett  retained  and  developed  the  silvery  tones  of 
Durand.      He   began    witli    portraits    and    did    not  study  at    all  in 


THK    HUDSON    RIVKR    SCHOOL  243 

Europe,  yet  he  has  quahties  which  are  supposed  to  be  best  if  not 
exchisively  developed  by  academic  study.  No  one  constructs  a 
landscape  more  firmly  than  he;  the  solidity  of  the  earth,  the  level 
of  the  lake,  the  plane  of  the  distant  hills,  the  envelopin^j;  of  all  by 
the  summer  sky  with  sunlit  clouds — all  are  given  with  an  al^solute 
sureness  which  seventy  years  have  not  diminished.  The  work  of 
Casilear,  who  like  Bristol  found  in  the  steep,  wooded  mountains  and 
clear  waters  of  Lake  George  a  favorite  source  of  inspiration,  has 
already  been  mentioned.  Cropsey  belongs  in  the  same  class, 
although  his  later  years  did  his  reputation  injustice.  There  is 
danger  that  the  thin,  crude  autumn  scenes  of  his  old  age,  with  glar- 
ing yellows  and  reds,  may  make  his  earlier  and  better  work  for- 
gotten. He  was  trained  as  an  architect,  but  soon  deserted  to 
painting,  though  at  least  once  he  returned  to  his  first  profession  long 
enough  to  design  the  stations  for  the  elevated  road  and  probably  did 
no  worse  than  any  one  else  would  have  done  who  tried  to  add 
beauty  to  that  utilitarian  structure.  His  first  work  show^ed  the 
ordinary  characteristics  of  what  was  being  done  about  him;  but  dur- 
ing his  long  stay  in  England,  beginning  in  1857,  he  painted  many 
important  pictures  not  only  of  the  warm,  brilliantly  colored  American 
autumn,  but  of  the  cool,  green  English  landscape  w^hich  w-ere  of 
merit  and  found  purchasers  in  London.     [ 

T.  Addison  Richards  added  to  the  views  of  Lake  George  and 
^the  White  Mountains,  which  were  visited  by  all  of  his  associates, 
studies  of  the  richer,  half-tropical  vegetation  of  Georgia  and  the 
Carolinas,  w^here  his  early  years  were  passed,  although  he  was  Eng- 
lish by  birth.  His  work  is  sometimes  confounded  with  that  of 
Williani  T.  Richards,  though  only  from  the  similarity  of  names,  for 
otherwise  there  is  no  great  resemblance,  nor  w^ere  the  artists  related. 
William  T.  Richards  was  born  in  Philadelphia  and  is  interesting 
as  one  of  the  very  small  group  of  artists  who  tried  to  put  Pre- 
Raphaelite  principles  into  actual  practice  ;  but  these  principles  as 
transplanted  into  American  soil  brought  forth  fruit  hardly  to  be 
recognized  by  the  P.  R.  B.'s. 

Ruskin's  writings  had  an  enormous  sale  (mostly  in  pirated 
editions),  and  they  stirred  up  great  waves  of  emotion  and  aspiration, 
but  there  was    hardlv  anv  one  in  America  at  this  time,  who  had  anv 


244  "  HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

kno\vled2:e  of  the  works  on  which  liis  theories  were  based.  He  could 
denounce  Michael  Angelo  and  the  Dutchmen,  he  could  praise  the 
early  Italians  and  Turner;  but  his  readers  knew  little  more  of  these 
names  than  what  he  told  them.  They  believed  in  the  prophet;  his 
eloquence,  his  sincerity,  his  nobility  of  character  inspired  them ; 
but  the  inspiration  was  vague.  It  is  on  record  that  an  exhibition, 
mostly  of  PreT^aphaelite  paintings,  was  organized  in  New  York  in 
October  of  1857  and  created  "an  immense  impression."  Material, 
however,  was  entirely  lacking  with  which  to  construct  the  curious 
mixture  of  mysticism,  toryism,  high  church,  and  pastiche  of 
fifteenth-century  Italy.  The  best  the  painter  could  do  was  to  go 
out  and  copy  nature  leaf  by  leaf,  with  a  loving  fidelity,  and  that  was 
what  the  other  painters  had  been  doing  for  a  generation  with  no 
impulse  from  Ruskin.  Richards's  wood  interiors  are  hardly  more 
minutely  exact  than  those  of  Durand.  The  weeds  and  wild  flowers 
are  instantly  recognizable  as  botanically  correct,  and  each  leaf  is 
insistently  brought  forward;  but  this  is  a  defect  rather  than  a  merit, 
for  the  general  harmony  of  the  canvas  is  often  lost,  and  the  fore- 
ground and  distance  do  not  hold  their  places.  Of  late  years 
Richards  has  confined  himself  mainly  to  marines,  and  the  same 
accurate  knowledge  which  he  earlier  displayed  in  vegetation  is  now 
turned  to  every  form  of  rolling  wave  and  breaking  surf,  and  the 
pictures  are  now  both   firm   in   construction  and  harmonious^ 

Whether  Whittredge  should  be  mentioned  in  the  same  class 
as  the  preceding  men  is  a  little  doubtful.  His  experience  was 
greater,  his  scope  wider,  and  yet  he  seems  to  belong  with  Kensett 
among  the  followers  of  Durand  rather  than  of  Cole.  He  was 
Ijorn  in  Ohio  in  1S20,  only  tw^o  years  later  than  Kensett,  and  went 
through  the  usual  preliminary  experience  of  portrait  painting  before 
he  turned  to  landscape.  In  Cincinnati,  where  he  worked  at  first, 
there  were  some  good  pictures  and  considerable  pride  in  the  local 
artists,  and  there  he  remained  until  1S49,  when  he  had  accumulated 
money  and  orders  enough  to  justify  a  trip  al3road,  which  trip  pro- 
longed itself  until  it  was  ten  years  before  he  returned  to  y\merica. 
The  first  half  of  the  time  was  spent  mostly  in  Diisseldorf,  where 
he  studied  three  years  under  Andreas  Achenbach ;  later  he  travelled 
and  spent  several  winters  in    Rome.      While  abroad  he  painted  a 


THE   HUDSON    RIVER   SCHOOL 


245 


number  of  landscapes,  some  with  figures,  and  on  his  return  he  also 
painted  some  figure  pieces.  His  admiration  for  the  German  school 
had  not  been  without  limitations,  but  he  had  adopted  its  methods 
and  its  thorough,  accurate,  but  dull  and  uninteresting,  execution. 
This  style  he  slowly  grew  out  of.  __ 

In  1866,  with  Sandford  R.  Gifford  and  Kensett,  Whittredece  made 
a  trip  to  the  far  West,  accompanying  General  Pope  on  a  tour  of 
inspection,  and  like  his  friend  Bierstadt  he  produced  a  number  of 
pictures  of  the  unknown  country  between  the  Mississippi  and  the 
Rockies,  which  still  show  something  of  the  Diisseldorf  handling  and 
the  Diisseldorf  conception  of  a  picture ;  but  from  this  time  the  influ- 
ence grows  weaker.  The  charm  of  the  hills  and  streams  and  wood- 
lands of  New  York  and  New  England  possessed  him,  he  ceased  to 
seek  strange  or  wonderful  subjects,  and  studied  with  sincerity  the 
nature  around  him,  working  out  of  the  conventions  he  had  learned, 
getting  a  truer,  more  varied,  richer  color  than  Diisseldorf  knew,  a  less 
conventional  composition,  and  above  all  that  sentiment,  that  whole- 
some love  of  nature  which  runs  through  the  whole  school.  He  has 
perhaps  a  deeper,  graver  note  than  the  rest,  and  the  old  training 
remains  in  the  severeness  that  keeps  the  construction  solid  through 
all  complexity  of  detail.  Some  of  his  forest  interiors  with  great 
trees,  mysterious  depths  of  shadow  and  light  trickling  down  on 
masses  of  rock  and  fern  and  moss,  are  among  the  best  things  of  the 
Hudson  River  school.  J\ 

Much  of  the  same  grave  feeling  is  found  in  the  works  of  Jervis 
McEntee  (born  in  Rondout,  1829),  but  he  had  not  the  thorough 
training  of  Whittredge.  Church  gave  him  some  instruction,  but 
for  some  time  he  wavered  between  trade  and  art,  and  it  was  not 
until  he  was  thirty  that  he  finally  decided  on  the  latter.  He  then 
made  a  short  trip  to  Europe  with  Sandford  R.  Gifford,  but  he  had 
no  thorough  training,  and  his  works  sometimes  show  the  lack  of  it. 
His  autumn  and  winter  scenes  are  his  best  productions  and  have  a 
very  personal  character. 

Sandford  R.  Gifford,  who  went  to  Europe  with  McEntee  in  1S59 
and  made  the  western  trip  with  Whittredge  in  1866,  is  in  a  way  a  con- 
nectincr  link  between  them  and  the  men  next  to  be  described.     The 

O 

dividing  lines  of  the  different  groups  must  not  be  drawn  too  strictly. 


246 


HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 


Most  of  the  painters  lived  long  and  produced  steadily.  Their  can- 
vases are  countless,  with  constant  interchange  of  subject  and  style 
among  themselves.  An  idea  of  the  personal  idiosyncracy  of  each 
could  only  be  given  in  the  presence  of  their  works,  and  that  in  suffi- 
ciently large  numbers.  A  verbal  analysis,  however  long  and  com- 
plete, would  only  be  confusing  and  wearisome.  And  yet  under  the 
similarity  of  handling  and  feeling  there  is  a  real  difference  in  the 
point  of  view,  the  eternal  difference  between  the  realists  on  the  one 


FlU.    52. BlERSTADT:     YOSEMITE    VaLI.EV,    LENUX    LlBKAKV. 


^ 

» 


hand  and  the  idealists  and  romantics  on  the  other.  The  one  paint 
their  actual  surroundings  with  some  selection,  but  faithfully  and 
literally  as  they  are,  the  others  seek  strange  scenes  and  try  to  infuse 
into  them  ])octry  or  mystery.  It  may  be  objected  that  the  preced- 
ing men  all  more  or  less  painted  European  views,  but  they  painted 
them  because  they  were  in  Europe  for  travel  or  study,  and  there 
was  nothing  else  to  paint.  But  Gifford  painted  Venetian  sails  and 
the  Acropolis  because  he  preferred  them  to  the  Catskills. 

The  marked  difference  in  this  respect  between  Durand  and  Cole 
has  already  been  spoken  of,  and  it  is  noteworthy  that  Gifford  was 
much  infiuenced  in  his  youth  by  Cole.  As  a  boy  he  had  instruc- 
tion from  John  Rubens  Smith,  a  painter  of  water-colors,  an  English- 


THE    HUDSON    RIVIOR    SCHOOL 


247 


man  by  birth  and  son  of  Jolin  Raphael  Smith,  the  well-known 
engraver  who  had  worked  much  for  Boydell.  His  son  had  painted 
portraits  and  exhibited  in  the  Royal  Academy  and  had,  moreover, 
known  personally  the  group  of  artists  that  illustrated  the  Boydell 
Shakespeare,  —  Reynolds,  Fuseli,  West,  and  the  others.  His  stories 
of  them  may  have  inclined  Gifford  when,  after  two  years  at  Brown 
University,  it  was  necessary  to  decide  on  a  profession,  to  turn  from 
the  paternal  iron  works  to  painting.  A  stronger  influence,  however, 
was  his  acquaintance  with  Cole,  whose  Catskill  studio  was  near 
his  home  and  from  whom  he  got  much  of  his  inspiration.  Soon 
after  he  had  decided  to  be  an  artist,  he  made  a  trip  to  Europe  ;  but 
he  found  nothing  in  the  schools  there  that  made  him  wish  for  their 
training.  He  was  a  peculiarly  independent,  self-centred  man,  and 
Whittredge,  who  met  him  on  this  trip  and  went  up  the  Rhine  with 
him,  recounts  how  curiously  direct  and  uncompromisingly  personal 
were  his  remarks  on  the  scenery.  He  worked  for  a  while  in  Rome 
and  then  returned  to  New  York  and  took  a  studio  in  the  old 
University  Building,  which  he  retained  to  the  end  of  his  life.  At 
the  outbreak  of  the  Rebellion  he  joined  the  Seventh  Regiment  and 
served  in  the  ranks  through  the  campaigns  in  1S61  and  again  in 
1863  and  1864.  In  1866  he  made  the  trip  to  the  West  with  Whit- 
tredge and  Kensett,  but  the  offer  of  a  horse  made  him  desert  his 
sketching  for  exploration.  Again  in  1868  he  went  to  Europe  and 
then  made  a  trip  around  the  Mediterranean,  not  again  returning 
there. 

Gifford  had  never  lacked  for  money,  but  the  impedimenta  of 
civilization  were  irksome  to  him.  He  lived  contentedly  in  his 
small  studio,  which  soon  became  well  known  to  a  large  circle  of 
friends;  he  was  generous;  he  was  kindly  and  particularly  chivalrous 
in  his  attitude  toward  women;  but  \u\v\\-y,  Pci^sicos  appa7^atus,\\^ 
abhorred  far  more  than  Horace.  Even  in  social  intercourse  he 
avoided  more  than  the  strictly  essential.  When  he  left  for  Europe 
he  said  "  good-by  "  to  his  friends  with  no  word  as  to  his  destination, 
and  when  two  years  later  he  returned,  he  entered  his  studio  and 
set  to  work  without  vain  salutations  or  explanations.  His  sole 
baggage  on  this  trip  (as  on  others)  was  a  satchel  hung  by  a  strap 
over  his  shoulder  and  from  this  the  lining  had  been  removed  as  a 


248  HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PALX  I IXG 

useless  incumbrance.  New  apparel  was  purcliasccl  as  the  old  was 
cast  away,  and  in  emergencies  his  ingenuity  found  a  remedy,  as 
when  he  appeared  at  an  evening  reception  in  the  dress  suit  of  his 
hotel  waiter. 

His  pictures  do  not  suggest  this  asceticism,  there  is  in  fact' more 
of  a  sensuous  note  in  them  than  in  those  of  any  of  his  contempora- 
ries. Kensett  he  resembles  most,  but  his  color  is  in  a  higher  key, 
richer,  softer,  sweeter.  Like  him  he  painted  in  his  studio  often 
from  very  slight  sketches,  keeping  his  pictures  long,  retouching  and 
glazing  until  they  were  brought  into  harmony.  He  is  the  first 
to  base  the  whole  interest  of  a  picture  on  purely  artistic  problems, 
such  as  the  exact  values  of  sunlit  sails  against  an  evening  sky.  It 
is  this  idealizing  and  poetizing  temper  that  brings  him  into  affinity 
with  Cole, 

But  Cole's  real  pupil  and  disciple  is  F.  E.  Church.  He  is 
the  only  one  who  in  a  literal  sense  can  be  said  to  have  been  his 
pupil,  for  when  Church  decided  that  he  wished  to  be  an  artist, 
his  family  made  no  opposition  but  arranged  a  meeting  with  Cole, 
who  took  him  into  his  own  house  in  the  Catskills  and  he  worked 
under  the  counsel  and  influence  of  the  master  until  Cole's  death. 
The  effects  of  this  teaching  were  not  direct.  While  Church's 
methods  of  painting  were  probably  influenced  by  Cole,  yet  he  was 
infinitely  more  skilful,  and  of  Cole's  story-telling,  moral,  allegorical 
subjects,  he  made  no  use;  but  it  was  probably  from  Cole  that  he  got 
the  idea  that  a  picture  should  be  grander,  more  ennobling  than 
a  mere  transcript  of  everyday  nature,  and  that  the  way  to  produce 
this  effect  was  not  by  deeper  feeling  expressed  through  the  artistic 
means  of  line,  color,  and  composition,  but  by  a  choice  of  nobler  sub- 
jects. The  idea  is  unsound,  but  it  has  not  always  been  as  univer- 
sally rejected  as  to-day.  It  has  had  many  followers,  l)ut  in  landscape 
none  has  carried  it  out  to  its  ultimate  conclusion  with  the  industry, 
the  intelligence,  and  the  brilliancy  of  Church,  Wliat  the  world 
offers  of  natural  marvels  to  delight  the  eye  and  amaze  the  mind 
he  sought  out :  the  falls  of  Niagara,  the  forests  of  the  tropics,  ice- 
bergs and  \'olcanoes,  the  isles  of  the  /Egcan  and  the  Acropolis 
of  Athens.  He  arranged  all  the  beauties  of  each  in  a  sort  of  pano- 
ramic   combination   and   added  exery  conceivable  adjunct    of    light 


FIG.   53.  — MORAN:    SOLITUDE. 


THK    HUDSON    RIVKR    SCHOOL 


251 


and  atmosphere,  rainbows,  mists,  sunsets,  eruptions;  and  the  result 
is  not  absurd,  but  on  the  contrary  always  interesting  and,  in  some 
of  the  later  work  like  the   Parthenon,  noble  and  beautiful. 

Even  Church's  South  American  scenes,  in  spite  of  their  funda- 
mental unsoundness,  are  fine.  The  execution  is  amazingly  clever. 
There  is  probably  no  man  to-day  who  could  do  the  same  thing.  The 
tangled  mass  of  tropical  foliage  in  the  foregrounds — ferns,  vines, 
orchids,  palms  —  is  put  in  with  a  wonderfully  minute  yet  brilliant 
handling.  It  does  not  always  connect  perfectly  with  the  distance, 
but  the  distance  itself  makes  us  feel  as  if  we  really  knew  wdiat  a 
tropical  lake  or  a  volcano  were  like.  It  is  no  wonder  that  they 
awoke  the  wildest  admiration  not  only  in  America  but  also  in 
Europe,  and  especially  in  England,  where  he  was  enthusiastically 
praised  by  the  critics,  even  Ruskin  commending.  Besides  his  public 
comments  the  latter  wrote  to  Charles  Eliot  Norton  in  1865:  "Church's 
'  Cotopaxi '  is  an  interesting  picture.  He  can  draw  clouds  as  few 
men  can,  though  he  does  not  know  yet  what  painting  means,  and 
I  suppose  he  never  will,  but  he  has  a  great  gift  of  his  own."  This 
is  not  enthusiastic,  but  it  comes  near  being  so  in  comparison  wnth 
his  ordinary  attitude  toward  America  as  a  home  of  the  arts.  Nine 
years  before  (in  1856)  he  justified  himself  in  calling  America  ugly. 
"  I  have  just  been  seeing  a  number  of  landscapes  by  an  American 
painter  of  some  repute  ;  and  the  ugliness  of  them  is  Wonderful.  I 
see  that  they  are  true  studies  and  that  the  ugliness  of  the  country 
must  be  Unfathomable,"  which  is  all  the  more  amusing  because 
the  painter  was  probably  Kensett,  who  was  fondly  supposed  by 
certain  of  his  friends  to  illustrate   Pre-Raphaelite  principles.  ^ 

Associated  with  Church  in  these  successes  was  Bierstadt,  who 
did  for  the  Rocky  Mountains  what  Church  attempted  for  the 
Andes ;  but  Bierstadt's  work,  while  inspired  by  the  same  desire  for 
stupendous  subjects,  is  heavy  and  inert.  He  was  born  in  Diisseldorf, 
a  cousin  of  Hasenclever,  whose  genre  paintings  were  one  of  the 
staple  articles  of  export  of  the  school.  When  he  came  to  America 
he  was  two  years  old,  and  when  he  finally  determined  to  be  a  painter 
his  first  object  was  to  get  together  enough  money  to  enable  him  to 
return  to  his  birthplace  and  pursue  his  studies  there.  He  acquired 
thoroughly  all  the  faults  of  the  school,  and  unlike  Whittredge,  who 


-D- 


HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 


^ 


was  his  fellow-pupil,  never  succeeded  in  shaking  them  off.  His 
smaller  pictures  are  interesting  and  clever,  but  the  huge  canvases 
which  made  his  reputation  are  but  a  sort  of  scene  painting,  superficial, 
exaggerated,  filled  with  detail  imperfectly  understood.  Every  ingre- 
dient of  the  work,  composition,  color,  mountain  peaks,  waterfalls, 
clouds,  sky,  rocks,  trees,  underbrush,  are  all  done  with  an  exasperat- 
ing, a  monotonous  ability  up  to  a  certain  degree  of  excellence  beyond 
which  nothing  goes.  There  is  a  dulness,  a  mechanical  quality 
about  it  all.  The  leaves  seem  of  painted  tin,  the  rocks  of  paste- 
board, the  mountains  themselves  seem  rather  reminiscent  of  the 
Alps  than  possessing  the  actual  characteristics  of  the  Rockies. 
But  the  great  superficial  canvases  impressed  the  popular  mind  (and 
some  of  the  critical  too)  both  at  home  and  abroad,  and  great  prices 
were  given  for  them.  Their  success,  though,  came  at  a  time  when 
0^,^;;-^+-  other  influences  were  becoming  potent  with  the  younger  men,  and 
V  Bierstadt  and  Church  had  fewTr  imitators  than  might  be  supposed. 

Louis  R.  Mignot  (only  five  years  younger  than  Church)  worked 
much  in  the  spirit  of  Church,  and  some  of  his  smaller  tropical  scenes 
are  deceptively  like  his  model.  He  was  born  in  South  Carolina, 
and  his  southern  sympathies  forced  him  at  the  outbreak  of  the 
Rebellion  to  leave  New  York  '^for  London,  where  he  remained, 
painting  with  success  until  his  death. 

Another  extremity  of  Church's  realm  was  occupied  by  William 
Bradford,  a  Quaker  born  and  bred,  who  made  repeated  trips  to 
Labrador  to  study  icebergs,  but  who  also  painted  many  marines. 
One  is  also  tempted  to  add  here  Thomas  Moran,  w^hose  long  series 
of  views  of  the  Yosemite  and  the  Yellowstone,  painted  with  a  w^on- 
derful  facility  of  hand,  give  him  a  certain  relationship  with  Bierstadt 
and  the  other  seekers  for  natural  marvels ;  but  he  is  a  later  man, 
has  a  wider  knowledge  of  painting,  and  draws  his  inspiration  quite  as 
much  from  Turner  as  from  the  Hudson  River  school.  In  fact  when 
that  school  \vas  at  its  zenith  he  was  still  settled  in  Philadelphia,  and 
the  Hudson  River  school  was  always  intimately  connected  with  New 
York,  influencing  the  other  cities  only  remotely.  If  some  Philadel- 
phian  artists  seemed  more  closely  allied  to  it,  it  was  largely  owing 
to  the  group  who  strove  to  follow  the  Pre-Raphaelite  faith  wn'th 
which  it  had  many  ignorances   in   common,  and  which,  as  in  the 


THE    HUDSON    RIVER  SCHOOL 


253 


case  of  Richards,  also  a  Philadelpliian,  produced  very  similar  work. 
Besides  him  there  were  Henry  Farrer,  Henry  Newman,  Charles 
Moore,  and  some  others  who  worked  laboriously  and  aspiringly, 
but  whose  enthusiasm  was  not  able  to  escape  from  tlie  conditions 
of  their  environment. 

Boston  held  still  further  aloof — the  best-known  landscape  painter 
there  being  George  L.  Brown,  who  had  little  connection  with  the 
native  school.     He  was  born  in  the  city  in  1814  (which  makes  him 


^ 

.  '^  1 

n 

m 

^:x 

.  v^ 

A 

^^H 

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1 

m 

^V,                                                                             ^,^JA 

iki 

K 

^•1 

^^^H 

V'H 

1 

■ 

^J^j^                                                                Ja"^ 

IbS 

7^^ 

^^^^Hw^^ 

:m 

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' 

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,-^  '  J 

p^  ''\l|J^^ 

^2^2j^j^^^f 

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1 

Fig.  54.  —  James  M.  Hart:    The  Adirondacks,  Ownkd  hv  J.  L.  (kawford,  Evj. 

the  senior  of  most  of  the  New  York  men),  and  though  he  lived  at 
one  time  in  the  latter  place,  yet  his  connections  and  sympathies  were 
with  Boston.  He  first  showed  his  genius  in  some  scenery  for  a 
dramatic  club;  then  practised  wood  engraving  until  almost  with  his 
first  effort  in  painting  a  patron  appeared  and  gave  him  a  hundred 
dollars  with  which  sum  he  promptly  started  for  Europe.  He  en- 
dured hardship  as  a  matter  of  course  but  he  managed  to  make  a 
short  stay  and  soon  after  went  back  for  a  long  sojourn  in  Italy,  where 
he  painted  Venice  and  Naples  and  more  or  less  of  the  intervening 
country  rather  well,  according  to  the  methods  practised  around  him 
but  with  little  specifically  American  either  in  his  handling  or  senti- 
ment.    On  his  return  in    i860,  after  a  residence  abroad  of  twenty 


254 


HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 


years,  he  continued  his  Italian  views,  but  also  made  some  paintings 
of  New  England  scenery  much  in  the  same  manner,  until  his  death 
in  18S9.  His  works  are  no  worse  than  most  of  those  of  the  W  hite 
Mountain  school,  but  they  are  no  better  and  have  not  like  them  a 
native  flavor  of  the  soil.     That  is  the  saving  merit  of  the  school. 

All  of  the  men  cited  and  many  more,  like  R.  W  Hubbard,  Bel- 
lows, William  and  James  McD.  Hart  and  Brevoort,  did  at  their  best 
good  work  —  work  which  would  show  without  discredit  beside  that  of 
their  European  contemporaries,  but  to  have  its  full  effect  it  must  be 
seen  sympathetically,  from  their  own  point  of  view,  and  with  allow- 
ance made  for  their  limitations.  Their  worst  work,  which  is  far 
commoner  than  their  best,  no  sympathy  can  save.  Thin,  dry,  crude 
without  being  bright,  niggling  in  execution  and  puerile  in  composi- 
tion, they  hung  on  the  white  walls  of  the  houses  in  lower  Fifth  Avenue 
above  the  haircloth-covered  furniture,  and  may  still  so  hang  in  some 
belated  cases,  but  the  canvases  are  as  antiquated  as  the  haircloth. 
Even  at  their  best  they  lacked  the  indefinable  quality  of  style, 
inseparable  from  great  painting.  Whittredge  and  McEntee  are  ex- 
ceptions, so  is  Gifford,  and  some  would  even  exempt  the  later  works 
of  Church ;  but  as  a  rule  no  breath  of  inspiration,  no  mastery  of 
noble  traditions  is  found.  Under  the  circumstances  it  could  not 
well  have  been  otherwise.  There  is  a  charming  story  of  Durand, 
at  the  end  of  his  long  life,  full  of  years  and  honors,  after  he  had 
given  up  painting,  sitting  in  the  studio  of  a  younger  painter  and 
comparing  the  spare  surroundings  of  his  own  youth  with  the  con- 
genial associations  and  ampler  culture  of  the  later  day  and  saying 
quite  simply  how  much  he  regretted  that  he  could  not  have  done 
other  and  better  work.  It  was  a  more  practical  appreciation  of 
the  same  difference  that  made  Inness  study  and  take  out  sketching 
with  him,  engravings  of  landscapes  by  the  old  masters,  that  he  might 
discover  the  secret  of  the  sentiment  that  he  found  in  them  and  not 
in  the  paintings  produced  about  him. 


h\'M.S.-5  :    AUILIMN    iJ.UvS,    MKTROPOIHAX     \llSi:i\l. 


4: 


it  also  made  som^  ^._.         ^- 

same  manner,  until  his  death 

han  most  of  those  of  the  White 

oetter  and  have  not  like  them  a 

-aving  merit  of  the  school. 

-"   -I-  ^    W   Hubbard,  bci 

_  :_.  .  -_  1.  did  at  their_best 

h  Would  s^howwitb  that  of 


tlv 

mpora 

iiust  be 

sc 

ad  with  allow- 

ar- 

b.ich   is  far 

cot 

•L,     UK'    >  V  IlllJcl  tl  \  \      L. 

Mill,  dry,  crude 

W' 

'ding  in  executi; 

ile  in  roniDosi- 

ti(. 

walls  of  thi 

.ji;>_ 

ab 

cloth-covered  furniture,  . 

ng  in  some 

be! 

but  the  canvases                antiqu 

'  haircloth. 

Ev 

H                             ,                                                                                                  •                       t                 ^ 

-ibic 

quality   of  style, 

L[CU-r 

., .,  j' 

^1   ^^ntee  are  ex- 

ev'Pii  V 

'nf('r  wnrlrs 

of 

could   not 
vvc  ;  charming  story  of  Durand, 

irs  and  honors,  after  he  had 

^j  iJcUMLiii^,  MLiiii*^  II!    Liic  bLuciio  of  a  younger  painter  and 

cor.;;,-...  .^  the,  spare  surroundings  df  his  own  youth  with  the  con- 
genial associations  .and  ampler  culture  of  the  later  day  and  saying 
quite  simply 'how  much  he  ed  that  he  could  not  have  done 

other  and   be  more  practical  .  tion   of 

the  rence  uness  oat  sketching 

wii  ^  ''  -"  ^;c  mighl 

;■  I ,    I  .     1.1  J. ,  I    , ,  ^    1  nrl    nri1 

11. 


.MUaaUM    MATfJOqOHTaM    ,^AAO   VlMtJ'KJA    :  r'.?:AV[VL] 


c 


CHAPTER    XIV 

CULMINATION    OF    THE    EARLY    LANDSCAPE    SCHOOL 
George  Inness.  —  Wyant.  —  Homer  D.  Martin.  —  Comparison  of  their  Works  with 

THOSE    OF    THE     LEADING     FRENCH    LaNDSCAPISTS.  —  ShURTLEFF.  —  GeORGE    H.    AND 

James  D.  Smillie.  —  Samuel  Colman.  —  R.  Swain  Gifford 

The  time  was  now  ripe  to  build  a  loftier  structure  on  the  foun- 
dations painfully  laid  by  the  earlier  men,  and  it  was  with  Inness, 
Wyant,  and  Homer  D.  Martin  that  the  early  school  culminated. 
George  Inness  was  the  earliest  of  the  three;  born  in  1825,  he  was 
contemporary  with  some  of  the  most  indurated  and  limited  of  our 
landscape  painters,  but  he  felt  instinctively  the  weakness  of  the 
school,  and  his  foreign  study  and  personal  genius  led  him  to  an 
ampler,  completer  art.  He  was  born  in  Newburgh,  New  York,  but 
his  family  moved  to  Newark,  New  Jersey,  where  his  boyhood  was 
passed.  He  was  delicate  as  a  youth,  and  after  trying  storekeeping 
without  success  was  obliged  to  give  up  a  position  with  a  firm  of 
map  engravers,  the  confinement  telling  on  his  health.  He  went 
back  to  Newark,  made  some  studies  and  sketches  from  nature,  and 
when  about  twenty  had  a  few  lessons  from  Regis  Gignoux,  his  only 
direct  instruction  in  painting.  His  small  canvases  sold  readily,  the 
Art  Union  being  a  steady  customer ;  but  he  w^as  dissatisfied  with 
his  work,  which  was  like  that  done  about  him,  —  thin,  smooth,  meagre. 
It  was  then  that  he  studied  prints  of  old  pictures,  but  he  soon  had 
an  opportunity  to  see  the  originals,  for  in  1847  a  friend  offered  to 
send  him  to  Europe,  and  after  stopping  at  London,  he  passed  fifteen 
months  at  Rome.  He  came  back  with  his  style  still  unformed,  yet 
struggling  toward  perfection.  The  sight  of  the  foreign  pictures 
which  were  then  beginning  to  come  to  the  country  sent  him  again 
to  Europe;  but  instead  of  going  to  Diisseldorf,  like  most  of  the 
students  of  the  time,  he  spent  a  year  in   Paris. 

When   he   got  back   again  to   America,   there   followed   a   long 

-55 


256  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

period  of  assimilating  what  he  had  seen  and  developing  not  only  his 
art  but  his  character;  for  Inness  was  a  deeply  spiritual  nature,  who 
was  not  content  to  put  aside  the  great  mysteries  of  life  as  vain  specu- 
lation. He  took  counsel  of  men  and  books.  For  seven  years  theol- 
ogy was  almost  his  only  reading.  Finally  he  accepted  the  doctrines 
of  Swedenborg,  which  seem  to  have  a  peculiar  attraction  for  some 
men  of  exceptional  ability,  and  whose  temperaments  combine  the 
mystical  with  the  logical.  In  1871  he  went  abroad  again  for  four 
years,  spending  them  partly  in  Paris  and  partly  in  RomCo  It  will  be 
seen  that  many  men  had  more  of  foreign  experience  than  he,  but  no 
other  drew  so  amply  and  so  wisely  from  the  great  store  of  European 
art,  both  old  and  new.  There  is  no  man  whom  he  can  be  said  to 
have  copied  or  even  imitated.  He  felt  nature  too  immediately  and 
sensitively  to  accept  another  man's  point  of  view;  but  he  was  a 
meditater  and  reasoner  on  theories  of  art,  and  sought  out  in  great 
work  the  qualities  that  made  it  so  and  developed  them  for  himself. 
His  art  philosophy  was  admirably  sound.  When  he  reasoned,  as  he 
loved  to  do,  with  a  congenial  listener  on  the  mysteries  of  life,  death, 
and  the  world  to  come,  his  talk  as  befitted  his  subjects  was  lofty  but 
obscure ;  but  when  he  spoke  of  painting,  he  was  admirably  clear. 
"  The  purpose  of  the  painter  is  simply  to  reproduce  in  other 
minds  the  impression  which  a  scene  has  made  upon  him.  A  work 
of  art  does  not  appeal  to  the  intellect.  It  does  not  appeal  to  the 
moral  sense.  Its  aim  is  not  to  instruct,  not  to  edify,  but  to  awaken 
an  emotion.  ...  It  must  be  a  single  emotion  if  the  work  has 
unity,  as  every  such  work  should  have,  and  the  true  beauty  of  the 
work  consists  in  the  beauty  of  the  sentiment  or  emotion  which  it 
inspires.  Its  real  greatness  consists  in  the  quality  and  force  of  this 
emotion.  Details  in  the  picture  must  be  elaborated  only  enough 
fully  to  reproduce  the  impression  which  the  artist  wishes  to  repro- 
duce. When  more  than  this  is  done,  the  impression  is  weakened 
or  lost,  and  we  see  simply  an  array  of  external  things  which  may 
be  very  cleverly  painted,  and  may  look  very  real,  but  which  do  not 
make  an  artistic  ])ainting.  The  effort  and  difficulty  of  an  artist 
are  to  combine  the  two;  namely,  to  make  the  thought  clear  and  to 
preserve  the  unity  of  impression.  Meissonier  always  makes  his 
thought  clear,  he  is  most  painstaking  in  his  details ;  Corot,  on  the 


CULMINATION    OF   THE    I:ARLY    LANDSCAPE   SCHOOL 


^57 


contrary,  is  to  some  minds  lacking  in  objective  force,  .  .  .  but 
Corot's  art  is  higher  than   Meissonier's." 

The  quotation  is  rather  long,  but  it  is  worth  giving,  not  only  as 
illustrating  the  spirit  of  Inness's  work,  but  as  supplementing  the  pre- 
ceding extract  from  Goethe.  The  painter  does  not  fall  below  the 
philosopher  either  in  soundness  of  thought  or  clearness  of  expres- 
sion, and  when  it  comes  to  practical  application  far  surpasses  him, 
for  the  Sage  of  Weimar  admired  some  fearful  things  in  landscape 
painting. 

Inness's  painting  never  became  rigid.  It  was  altering  and 
developing  to  the  last,  even  at  the  same  date  he  worked  in  different 
manners  to  suit  his  subjects  and  said  himself  that  he  "seemed  to 
have  two  opposing  styles,  —  one  impetuous  and  eager,  the  other 
classical  and  elegant."  He  painted  both  small  canvases  and  also 
large  works  like  the  "  Barberini  Pines  "  or  the  "  Peace  and  Plenty  " 
of  the  Metropolitan  Museum.  His  variety  was  great.  All  seasons 
of  the  year,  all  times  of  the  day,  all  tempers  of  the  sky,  were  repre- 
sented not  mechanically,  but  with  a  new  formula  discovered  for 
each.  He  preferred  the  rich  tones  of  autumn  and  sunset;  but  he 
could  take  a  bank  of  June  foliage  on  a  gray  day  w4ien  there  w^ere 
no  strong  shadows,  when  grass  and  leaves  were  alike  of  the  same 
brilliant,  uncompromising  green,  and  without  mitigation  of  the  bril- 
liancy nor  laborious  drawing  of  detail  make  the  whole  mass  firm,  yet 
soft  and  dewy  with  infinitely  delicate  gradations  of  tone  and 
shadow.  His  earliest  work  shows  much  minuteness,  and  there  is 
sometimes  a  shock  of  surprise  at  finding  his  signature  on  a  canvas 
with  a  blue  mountain,  hard  and  sharp  against  a  bright  sky  with  a 
group  of  anemic  trees  in  the  foreground.  But  he  soon  gained  rich- 
ness of  tone  and  breadth  of  handling,  and  there  are  not  wanting  those 
who  prefer  pictures  of  his  middle  period,  like  the  small  thunder- 
storms painted  at  Medford,  Massachusetts,  with  their  brilliancy  and 
their  enamel-like  texture,  to  the  looser,  freer  w^ork  of  his  later  years. 
They  have  not  the  same  mastery,  however.  The  structure  is  not  so 
solid,  the  harmony  is  not  so  true.  In  his  middle  period,  frequently 
a  light  spot,  a  group  of  cattle,  a  sail  on  a  river,  is  out  of  value,  strikes 
the  eye  with  too  great  insistence.  His  late  w^ork  holds  together 
flawlessly. 


2^8 


HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 


His  method  of  painting  was  to  cover  the  whole  canvas  with  a 
thin  orlaze  of  Indian  red,  to  touch  in  the  main  masses  of  shadow  in 
black,  and  then  to  work  on  this  foundation,  gradually  bringing  the 
whole  picture  forward  by  constant  working  over.  As  a  reasoner 
and  theorizer  on  his  art  he  had  many  maxims  for  his  work,  the 
most  important  being  that  the  sky  should  be  given  as  a  half-tone 
asjainst  which  both  the  lights  and  darks  of  the  picture  should  con- 


rii_ 


iNM.ss  :    Delaware  Valley,  Metkovoiitan  Miseum. 


trast.  This  is  one  of  the  reasons  why  his  canvases  seem  richer  and 
more  decorative  than  those  of  the  White  Mountain  school,  who  usu- 
ally strove  to  key  the  sky  up  to  the  brightest  possible  tone.  Inness's 
practice  was  also  that  of  Ruysdael,  and  Fromcntin  has  noted  how 
admirably  it  makes  the  pictures  of  the  latter  set  in  the  gold 
of  the  frames,  though  it  was  probably  only  indirectly  through  the 
French  landscape  painters,  the  so-called  Fontaincbleau  school,  that 
Inness  received  the  Dutch  tradition.  It  is  with  these  last  that  he  is 
affiliated,  and  his  pictures  hang  harmoniously  with  theirs  and  hold 
their  own  in  the  company.      In  some  of  his  later  work  there  may  be 


FIG.   56.  — WYANT:    BROAD   SILENT  VALLEY,  OWNED   BY   GEORGE  A.  HEAIOs,  ESQ. 


CULMINATION    OK   THE    EARLY    LANDSCAPE   SCHOOL  261 

a  vagueness,  a  lack  of  firmness.  Some  of  the  things  sold  from  his 
studio  after  his  death  he  might  have  worked  on  more,  but  it  is  prob- 
able that  he  found,  as  he  said  about  Corot,  that  more  objective  force 
meant  weakening  or  loss  of  that  sentiment  which  was  to  him  the 
reason  for  the  picture.  Like  the  Greek,  he  felt  the  God  in  the 
stream  or  grove,  the  immanent  presence  of  superhuman  powers, 
and  it  is  his  crowning  merit  that  he  does  succeed  to  a  certain  ex- 
tent in  "  reproducing  in  other  minds  the  impression  which  the  scene 
made  upon  him." 

Inness  had  less  popular  vogue  than  most  of  the  men  around  him. 
Until  the  end  of  his  life  his  larger  pictures  sold  with  difficulty,  and  the 
newspapers  served  him  no  such  adulation  as  they  gave  to  Church  or 
Bierstadt.  It  is  curious  therefore  that  Wyant  should  have  heard  of 
him  and  should  have  made  the  journey  from  Cincinnati  in  the  early 
sixties  to  see  him  rather  than  another.  Wyant  was  born  in  a  little 
Ohio  village  and  had  the  usual  early  experiences  of  the  boy  with  a 
desire  for  painting  in  such  a  place.  He  worked  on  signs,  but  it  was 
not  until,  at  the  age  of  twenty,  he  moved  to  Cincinnati  that  he  saw 
any  meritorious  paintings.  He  may  have  found  there  something  by 
Inness  which  pleased  him  or  have  had  some  special  knowledge  of 
him.  In  any  case,  he  made  the  journey  to  Perth  Amboy  for  advice 
and  aid,  which  were  freely  given  and  then  returned  to  Cincinnati  and 
worked  there  until  1864,  when  he  came  to  New  York  and  the  next 
year  sailed  for  Europe,  though  his  stay  there  was  short.  He  got 
some  German  training,  but  disliked  the  work  of  the  school  and  pre- 
ferred the  English  work  of  Constable  and  Turner.  On  his  return  he 
settled  in  New  York  until  in  1S73  he  joined  a  government  exploring 
expedition  to  Arizona  and  New  Mexico,  in  hopes  of  benefiting  his 
health,  which  was  beginning  to  fail ;  but  the  hardships  which  he 
endured,  caused  partly  by  the  brutality  of  the  leader  of  the  expedi- 
tion, so  far  from  improving  his  condition  resulted  in  paralysis,  and 
he  was  never  able  to  use  his  right  hand  after.  He  however  learned 
to  paint  with  his  left  hand  with  no  diminution  of  skill. 

As  an  artist  Wyant  makes  no  such  varied  and  ample  appeal  as 
Inness.  Much  of  his  work  consists  of  variations  on  a  single  note. 
His  typical  picture  is  a  glimpse  of  sunny,  rolling  country  seen 
between  the  trunks  of  trees  that  have  grown  tall  and  slender  in  a 


262  HISTORY    OF    AMERICAN    PAINTING 

wood,  usually  birches  or  maples.  This  he  painted  with  sure,  firm 
brush  work,  which  enabled  him,  when  he  would,  to  model  the  summer 
clouds  and  give  the  foreground  detail  with  exactness  yet  without  los- 
ing for  an  instant  the  unity,  the  sentiment  and  silvery  shimmer  pecul- 
iar to  his  work.  In  a  certain  delicate  refinement  none  of  our  other 
artists  have  equalled  him.  Both  Inness  and  W'yant  altered  and 
matured  their  style  with  age,  but  it  was  a  steady,  subjective  develop- 
ment     The  work  of  each  is  perfectly  harmonious  with  itself. 

The  alterations  of  manner  of  Homer  D.  Martin  are  far  more 
abrupt  and  confusing.  Born  in  Albany  in  1838,  he  was  the  same 
age  as  Wyant.  He  turned  naturally  to  painting,  and  after  two 
weeks'  instruction  from  James  Hart  began  to  produce  pictures, 
exhibiting  in  the  Academy  of  Design  before  he  was  of  age.  He 
went  abroad  first  in  1876,  then  in  1881,  when  he  stayed  five  years, 
and  again  in  1892  for  several  months.  His  early  work  resembles 
that  of  Kensett.  The  shadows  are  of  warm  brown,  the  outlines 
are  sharp,  and  brilliancy  is  given  by  crisp  lights  touched  in  much 
in  Kensett's  manner.  But  Martin  studied  nature  more  intimately 
and  more  profoundly.  His  Adirondack  views  have  Kensett's 
qualities  in  a  higher  and  more  artistic  development.  The  composi- 
tion is  less  commonplace,  better  both  in  line  and  mass,  and  more 
characteristic  of  the  country.  The  edges  of  the  mountains  against 
the  sky  and  the  shores  of  the  lakes  are  sharp  and  fine  as  they  show 
through  the  clear  mountain  air,  but  drawn  with  infinite  delicacy; 
while  the  masses  of  the  forests  and  hills  are  kept  simple  and 
strong  in  spite  of  the  multiplicity  of  detail  with  which  they  are 
filled.  The  painting  is  thin  but  finished,  with  a  smooth,  rich,  trans- 
parent surface,  like  a  piece  of  old  lacquer. 

From  this  style  he  developed  until  his  later  work  is  in  the 
strongest  contrast  with  it.  It  was  the  sight  of  the  works  of  the 
French  landscapists  of  the  Fontainebleau  school,  then  just  beginning 
to  be  imported,  which  gave  the  impulse  for  the  change.  Martin 
felt  the  effect  of  their  greater  unity,  their  deeper  sentiment.  At 
the  very  beginning  of  the  seventies  he  was  a  fervent  admirer  of 
Corot,  then  hardly  beginning  to  be  recognized  even  in  France. 
It  was  not  an  admiration  that  led  to  direct  imitation,  but  which 
served   rather   as    an    inspiration   to   show   how   much   of  feeling  a 


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CULMINATION    OF   THH    EARLY    LANDSCAPE   SCHOOL  265 

landscape  could  be  made  to  express.  His  first  short  trip  abroad 
in  1876  only  strengthened  this  endeavor,  which  culminated  during 
his  five  years'  stay.  Martin  was  much  older  than  the  others  of 
his  school  when  he  made  his  long  visit  abroad,  and  he  came  in 
contact  with  a  different  spirit  in  landscape  painting  than  the  others 
had  known.  In  the  eighties  the  Fontainebleau  school  had  triumphed 
and  had  been  accepted  so  indisputably  that  argument  about  them 
had  ceased.  It  was  a  different  group  —  Monet,  Sisley,  Pissarro,  and 
their  like  —  who  were  in  fullest  activity,  challenging  attention.  The 
high-keyed  pictures,  the  disintegration  of  color  to  give  the  brightness 
of  sunlight,  the  spotty  brush  work,  all  the  insistent  innovations  of  the 
school  did  not  influence  Martin  ;  but  he  recognized  in  each  canvas 
the  unity  of  impression  which  gave  the  school  its  name,  and  their 
great  power  and  carrying  force. 

The  lack  of  this  power  had  been  the  failing  of  the  old  American 
school  and  to  obtain  it  Martin  changed  his  whole  manner  of  paint- 
ing and  produced  a  series  of  works  which  seem  at  first  glance 
scarcely  the  work  of  the  same  man.  The  paint  is  laid  on  heavily, 
sometimes  with  the  palette  knife ;  the  drawing,  while  true  and 
subtle,  is  generalized  and  simplified  to  the  last  degree ;  the  sky 
and  water  instead  of  smooth,  thin,  single  tints  are  a  mass  of  heavy, 
interwoven  strokes  of  different  tones.  Even  the  subjects  —  the 
Normandy  churches  and  farms,  the  roads  and  meadow  streams  lined 
with  tall,  trimmed  poplars  —  have  small  relationship  to  the  gaunt,  burnt 
mountains  of  the  Adirondacks.  At  base  the  change  is  not  so  great  — 
hardly  more  than  the  use  of  the  palette  knife,  larger  brushes  or  more 
fully  charged  with  color,  and  a  looser  touch.  The  real  essentials  (the 
feeling  for  the  relations  of  mass,  for  the  exact  difference  of  tone 
between  the  skv  and  the  solid  earth,  the  sense  of  subtle  color)  are  the 
same,  and  under  every  change  of  surface  remains  the  same  deep,  grave 
melancholy,  sobering  but  not  saddening,  which  is  the  keynote  of 
Martin's  work.  After  his  return  to  America  he  painted  with  the 
same  handling  many  of  his  old  subjects,  mountain  and  coast  views, 
and  these,  his  latest  canvases,  may  well  be  considered  his  crowning 
achievements. 

With  these  three  men —  Inness,  Wyant,  and  Martin  —  the  early 
American  landscape  school  culminates.      If  we  insist  on  unprofitable 


266 


HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 


comparisons  and  claim  for  any  of  our  art  an  equality  with  what  was 
best  in  contemporary  Europe,  —  a  real  ec|uality,  not  one  hedged  and 
bolstered  uj:)  with  apologetic  references  to  the  limitations  of  our  posi- 
tion,—  it  is  these  men  that  we  must  put  forward,  for  the  long  period 
between  the  death  of  Stuart  and  the  rise  of  the  present  school.  The 
essentials  of  greatness  they  seem  to  have  had,  —  deep  feeling  which 
took  a  pictorial  form,  ample  knowledge,  complete  mastery  of  their 
material,  and  for  each  a  style,  personal  and  distinguished,  which  burst 
through  that  commonplace  which  fetters  us  all. 


Fic.  58. — 'NTakiix  :    ViKW  ox  Tin-.  Skink,  METRopoi.nAN  MrsK.rM. 

The  unprofitableness  of  comparison  has  been  admitted,  yet  ap- 
preciation of  the  standpoint  from  which  they  should  be  regarded  and 
of  the  grounds  on  which  supremacy  is  claimed  for  them  is  best 
gained  if  thev  are  rcfjarded  in  connection  with  the  trio  of  great 
Frenchmen,  Corot,  Rousseau,  and  I)aul)ign\'.  Thus  it  is  possible  in 
a  way  to  get  their  l)earings,  to  put  them  in  ])r()per  perspective  with 
the  great  world.  It  is  noticeable  that  tlie  com[)arison  can  only  be 
made  with  the  \-erv  best  men  like  those  above  named.  With  the 
ordinary  excellent  Salon  landscape  painters,  even  (to  take  names  at 


CULMINATION    OF    THE    EARLY    LANDSCAPE    SCHOOL  267 

random)  with  men  so  good  as  Fran9ais  or  Pelouse,  they  are  absolutely 
incommensurable.  The  obvious  mastery  of  the  French,  the  knowl- 
edge of  great  traditions,  the  perfect  drawing,  the  skilful  brush  work, 
the  sound  construction,  approve  themselves  at  once  to  any  beholder. 
The  great  mass  of  the  work  of  the  Hudson  River  school  would  look 
thin,  weak,  and  amateurish  beside  them,  and  even  Inness  demands 
a  different  point  of  view  —  as  does  equally  Corot.  It  is  only  with 
time  and  companionship  that  this  very  obviousness  of  skill,  this 
insistence  on  external  form,  becomes  wearisome  or  at  least  loses  its 
power  to  interest  and  refresh.  The  endurance  of  charm  is  the 
mark  of  the  greater  men,  and  this  is  the  common  possession  of  both 
of  the  groups  under  consideration.  Their  pictures  on  the  walls  of  a 
room  make  no  insistent  appeal  to  attention,  but  their  presence  is  felt 
half  unconsciously  like  that  of  old  and  sympathetic  friends  whose 
real  value  can  only  be  comprehended  after  long  acquaintance.  In 
the  effort  to  express  these  deeper  emotions,  natural  and  obvious 
methods  of  the  schools,  however  sound,  must  be  discarded  or  de- 
veloped to  suit  the  individual  genius.  The  resultant  work  is  diffi- 
cult to  judge  by  fixed  critical  standards.  The  French  painters  show 
the  effect  of  their  nationality  and  surroundings  in  a  greater  com- 
pleteness of  expression  and  a  more  even  excellence.  The  work  of 
the  Americans,  while  at  its  best  it  leaves  nothing  to  be  desired  in 
construction  or  finish,  yet  often,  as  in  the  case  of  Inness's  later  work, 
is  so  loose,  so  vague,  that  a  European  critic  even  though  an  admirer 
of  Corot  might  refuse  to  consider  it  on  account  of  its  insufficiency. 
Yet  the  charm  is  there  also,  subtle  and  not  to  be  reproduced.  The 
world  to-day  cares  less  for  elaboration  in  painting  than  it  did  and 
more  for  charm.  Perhaps  posterity  may  delight  in  all  of  the  work 
equally,  in  any  case  the  position  of  the  best  of  it  seems  assured. 

With  these  paintings  we  are  brought  into  the  immediate  present, 
far  from  the  beginnings  of  the  old  White  Mountain  school.  They  are 
even  more  in  accord  with  the  taste  of  the  day  than  when  Martin  died 
in  1897.  Who  else  should  be  added  from  the  older  men,  alive  to-day 
and  painting  with  unabated  vigor,  to  round  out  this  first  culmination 
of  our  landscape  art  is  a  difficult  question  that  few  would  answer 
in  exactly  the  same  way.  Shurtleff,  born  in  1838,  probably  has 
more    affinitv   to    Whittredge    than    to    the    younger    men   if  only 


268  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

because  our  native  forests  are  more  to  him  than  all  the  oaks  of 
Fontainebleau  or  beeches  of  Burnham.  He  did  not,  however, 
begin  to  paint  until  1870.  There  had  been  some  drawing  and 
illustrating  after  his  graduation  from  Dartmouth  College,  and  a 
short  but  severe  experience  of  soldiering.  He  volunteered  in  the 
naval  brigade  at  the  outbreak  of  the  war,  rose  to  be  adjutant,  and  is 
said  to  have  been  the  first  federal  officer  to  be  wounded  and  made 
prisoner.  When  he  took  up  art,  he  began  as  an  animal  painter  and 
onl)'  later  produced  the  clear,  broadly  painted  sunlit  forest  interiors 
for  which  he  is  now  known. 

They  are  as  far  from  the  grave  note  of  Whittredge  as  the  land- 
scapes of  George  H.  Smillie  are  from  the  melancholy  of  Martin. 
Both  he  and  James  D.  Smillie  are  sons  of  James  Smillie,  a  Scotch 
engraver  who  early  emigrated  to  America,  first  to  Quebec  but 
soon  after  to  New  York,  where  he  was  long  active  and  was  the 
authorized  interpreter  of  the  works  of  Cole,  Durand,  Kensett,  and 
their  friends  from  the  days  of  the  old  Art  Union,  for  which  he 
executed  several  plates,  down  to  comparatively  late  times.  James 
D.  Smillie,  who  was  the  elder  son,  began  in  his  father's  profession, 
etching  his  first  plate  at  the  age  of  eight  and  collaborating  with 
his  father  in  most  of  his  important  work  until  1864,  when  he  turned 
to  painting.  George  H.  Smillie  studied  with  James  M.  Hart  and 
painted  from  the  first,  though  his  work  shows  little  trace  of  the 
influence  of  his  master.  Both  of  the  brothers  are  skilful  executants, 
but  there  is  in  the  paintings  of  the  younger  a  special  note  of  gayety 
and  brightness  which  is  personal  and  recognizable.  There  is  noth- 
ing in  the  work  of  either  that  is  antiquated  or  out  of  date,  and 
it  is  something  of  a  surprise  to  learn  how  long  they  have  been 
practising  their  profession. 

It  gives  an  even  greater  shock  to  learn  that  Samuel  Colman 
exhibited  his  first  picture  in  1850.  To  be  sure,  he  was  young, 
only  eighteen  at  the  time,  and  had  been  favored  in  his  surround- 
ings. His  father  was  a  publisher  and  bookseller,  a  man  of  excep- 
tional culture,  and  his  store  was  a  resort  for  artists  and  those  who 
loved  books  and  prints,  a  little  centre  of  light  and  learning,  and 
prized  after  the  manner  of  the  time  when  the  material  of  culture  was 
rare  and  enjoyed  with  a  zest  which  we  have  lost.     Colman  studied 


CULMINATION    OF   THE    EARLY    LANDSCAPE   SCHOOL 


269 


under  Durand,  but  liis  work  sliows  affinity  with  that  of  Sandford 
R.  Gifford,  if  with  any  one.  He  travelled  abroad  in  1 860-1 862, 
in  1867  he  founded  with  James  D.  Smillie  the  American  Society  of 
Painters  in  Water  Colors,  now  the  American  Water  Color  Society, 
and  was  its  first  president.  In  187 1  he  again  went  abroad  for  four 
years,  travelling  extensively.  His  work  shows  the  effects  of  these 
travels,  for  he  loved  the  picturesqueness  of  foreign  lands  and  the 
warm,  rich  light  of  Italy,  Spain,  and  the  East.  Both  in  the  choice 
of  these  subjects  and  in   mellowness  of  tone   he  resembles  Gifford, 


^^■%^  ..    ^.^'^'lapi 

^^^^^^B1^m5 

\^^-^'        ■j=^sS:::0^^;,.^^st'is^,^-t  ^: 

^^^H2^ 

r 

./  '^PfpiPIIIHH^K^ 

1^          -y^-^^— ---'^ 

r  :-^ 

Fig.  59.  —  R.  Swain  Giffoku  :    Landscape. 

but  he  paints  with  a  solider  impasto  of  color  and  a  larger,  stronger 
draftsmanship. 

Another  artist  who  sometimes  resembles  in  subjects  and  in  love 
of  warm  color  Sandford  R.  Gifford  is  his  namesake  (though  the 
family  relationship,  if  any,  is  extremely  remote),  R.  Swain  Gifford. 
The  resemblance  is,  however,  less  strong  than  in  the  case  of  Colman. 
R.  Swain  Gifford  had  his  first  instruction  from  Albert  van  Beest, 
a  Dutch  painter  of  no  great  talent,  but  thoroughly  trained,  a  man 
of  education,  an  ex-officer  in  the  Dutch  navy,  and  the  master  and 
collaborator  of  Bradford.  Him  Gifford  as  a  schoolboy  used  to  take 
out  in  a  sail-boat  when  he  went  sketching,  and  possibly  he  got  from 
him  something  of  the  gravity  of  the  old  Dutch  painters,  which  shows 


270  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

even  in  his  Algerian  and  Tlgyptian  scenes,  and  still  more  in  the 
canvases  which  are  most  characteristic  of  him,  —  the  long  brown 
sweeps  of  moorland  or  seashore  under  a  sky  of  broken  gray  clouds, 
thoroughly  constructed,  solidly  painted,  and  with  a  fine,  virile 
sentiment.  But  here  the  list  of  living  landscape  painters  must 
stop  for  the  present.  There  are  many  more  whose  work  is  in 
entire  harmony  with  that  of  those  last  named,  but  all  of  these  latter 
were  painting  and  exhibiting  before  the  end  of  the  third  quarter 
of  the  last  century.  They  may  have  broadened  and  matured  during 
the  last  thirty  years,  but  they  laid  the  foundations  of  their  art  in  a 
different  time  than  their  successors,  whose  achievements  are  of  the 
present  and  who  will  be  spoken  of  later. 


CHAPTER   XV 

FIGURE   AND   PORTRAIT    PAINTING   IN    THE   YEARS   PRECEDING 

THE   CIVIL   WAR 

The  Portrait  and  Figure  Painters.  —  Elliott.  —  Le  Clear.  —George  A.  Baker.— 
Healv.  — Huntington.  —  William  Page.  —  Henry  Peters  Gray.  —  J.  G.  Chap- 
man. —  RossiTER.  —  Rothermel.  —  Leutze.  —  Mayer.  — Lang 

The  American  landscape  school  was  in  truth  a  school,  as  far  as 
such  a  thing  is  possible,  under  modern  conditions.  Its  develop- 
ment was  logical,  consecutive,  so  that  it  may  be  followed  closely. 
The  characters  of  the  men,  the  changing  social  surroundings,  the 
influence  of  foreign  schools,  developed  not  only  individuals,  but 
the  school  as  a  whole.  With  the  portrait  and  figure  painters  of  the 
same  period  it  is  different.  There  is  no  unity.  They  could  not 
start,  as  the  landscapists  did,  from  a  common  basis  of  inexperience, 
to  learn  by  painfully  representing  everything  what  could  with  advan- 
tage be  omitted.  There  were  already  plenty  of  portrait  painters, 
Trumbull  and  Vanderlyn,  Jarvis  and  Inman,  and  ^ully  and  Hard- 
ing, all  working  vigorously  and  each  breaking  further  a^-ay  from  the 
English  tradition  of  Reynolds  and  West,  which  was  pretty  nearly 
dead  even  in  England.  To  replace  it  there  was  a  multitude  of  influ- 
ences of  every  nation  and  of  every  age  ;  but  no  sufficient  number  of 
artists  following  the  same  illumination  to  form  a  clearly  defined 
group.  There  was  not  even  a  pious  error  as  to  the  artistic  impor- 
tance of  our  national  characteristics  to  inspire  them,  and  the  heads 
of  American  statesmen  and  burghers  were  painted  with  none  of 
the  rapt  enthusiasm  which  was  lavished  on  the  contemporary 
"  Autumn  in  the  Catskills,"  or  "  V^iews  on  Lake  George." 

Inman  died  before  the  middle  of  the  century;  Morse  had  aban- 
doned painting  by  that  time;  Sully  still  worked  in  Philadelphia,  but 
was  growing  old  and  rather  out  of  fashion.  The  English  tradition,  or 
some  transmogrified  development  of  it,  was  carried  on   by  Charles 


2  72  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTINC, 

Loring  Elliott,  who  was  a  skilful  portraitist  and  about  the  best  of  his 
time.  He  was  born  in  Auburn,  New  York,  in  1812,  his  father  being 
an  architect,  and  tlie  usual  tales  of  precocious  talent  describe  him 
as  first  showing  mechanical  genius  by  the  construction  of  windmills 
and  water-wheels.  It  was  envy,  or  ratlier  emulation,  of  a  schoolmate, 
who  could  draw  a  horse  and  who  was  greatly  admired  for  the  accom- 
plishment, which  first  turned  him  to  art.  He  got  all  the  pictures  of 
horses  that  he  could,  and  struggled  over  them  until  at  length  he 
took  to  looking  at  real  horses,  and  finally,  in  a  set  competition, 
vanquished  his  rival  and  succeeded  to  all  his  honors,  because  the 
vanquished  one  could  only  draw  a  horse  standing,  whereas  Elliott 
could  draw  it  in  motion.  This  success  turned  all  his  energies  to  art, 
until,  at  the  age  of  ten,  he  made  his  first  effort  in  oil  painting,  which 
came  near  being  fatal  to  him.  He  had  procured  with  difficulty  the 
necessary  materials,  and  retired  to  a  vacant  room,  where  he  might 
work  in  secret,  taking  with  him  a  pail  of  lighted  charcoal  for 
warmth,  from  the  fumes  of  which  he  was  rescued  just  in  time  to 
escape  asphyxiation. 

Elliott's  father  disapproved  of  the  painter's  profession,  but 
employed  him  during  his  school  days  to  make  architectural  draw- 
ings, and  finally  allowed  him  to  go  to  New  York  with  a  letter  to 
Trumbull.  It  was  perhaps  because  he  himself  in  his  youth  had  been 
advised  by  Burke  to  study  architecture  as  a  more  promising  profes- 
sion than  painting  that  Trumbull  urged  the  same  course  upon 
Elliott,  citing  his  own  case  to  show  how  inadequate  were  the  returns 
from  a  painter's  career.  Yet  when  the  young  man  insisted,  Trum- 
bull gave  him  access  to  the  casts  in  the  American  Academy,  instruct- 
ing and  aiding  him  ;  but  always  insisting  that  he  should  become  an 
architect,  until  I^^lliott  finally  broke  away  from  him  and  the  old 
Academy,  and  went  to  study  under  Quidor,  who  had  been  a  fellow- 
pupil  witli  Inman  under  Jarvis  and  who  painted  signs,  fire-engines, 
and  very  bad  pictures.  Here  he  worked  away  for  two  or  three  years 
doing  anything  and  everything,  until  he  finally  produced  a  couple 
of  pictures,  "  The  Hold  Dragoon"  and  "A  Dutchman's  Eireside," 
which  he  exhibited  in  a  shop  window,  and  ^\■hich  gained  him  some 
renown  and  a  sort  of  oiificial  consecration  besides,  h'or  one  day 
there  appeared  at  liis  studio  Colonel  Trumbull,  whom  he  had  not  seen 


FIG.  60.  — ELLIOTT :    GOVERNOR   BOUCK,  CITY   HALL,  NEW   YORK. 


FIGLH^I':    AND    PORTRAIT    PAINTING    HKFORK    Till-:    CIVIL    WAR      275 

since  he  left  the  Academy,  and  who,  removing  his  hat  with  old-time 
dignity,  solemnly  said:  "  You  can  go  on  painting,  sir.  You  need  not 
follow  architecture.  I  wish  you  good  day,  sir,"  and  so  departed,  and 
Elliott  never  saw  him  again. 

Instead  of  remaining  in  the  city  to  follow  up  this  first  success, 
Elliott  returned  to  the  centre  of  the  state,  and  there  painted  portraits, 
for  small  prices,  in  the  regular  itinerant  way.  He  did  an  enormous 
amount  of  work,  and  his  skill  increased  greatly.  Tuckerman  relates 
with  much  detail  how  he  became  possessed  of  a  particularly  fine 
Stuart,  which  he  studied  profoundly  and  which  had  considerable 
influence  on  his  style.  This  Stuart  was  admired  and  coveted  by  a 
local  dignitary,  who,  when  the  painter  would  not  part  with  it,  had  it 
seized  for  debt  and  sold  by  the  sheriff,  and  then  bought  it  in  at  a 
trifling  cost  —  or,  rather,  he  would  have  done  so  if  the  painter,  fore- 
warned, had  not  removed  the  original  and  placed  in  the  frame  a 
copy  quite  good  enough  to  deceive  the  local  critics.  It  was  not 
until  the  new  owner  bragged  of  his  prize  that  the  truth  came  out, 
and  then  there  was  a  lawsuit,  which  resulted  in  Elliott's  paying  his 
debt  and  retaining  his  picture. 

After  ten  years  of  this  life  he,  in  1845,  returned  to  New  York, 
and  from  then  on  until  his  death  he  had  constant  work.  He  was 
happily  married,  of  a  bright,  sunny  nature,  with  many  friends  and 
sufficient  financial  prosperity.  The  only  cloud  on  his  life  was  an 
excessive  indulgence  in  drink,  records  of  which  crop  up  in  the  old 
annals,  and  which  was  commoner  then  than  now.  It  is  mentioned 
here  only  because  he  broke  the  habit,  in  the  old  manner  (also  rather 
out  of  fashion  at  present),  by  taking  a  pledge  drawn  up  in  legal 
form,  witnessed  by  a  friend,  and  signed  on  the  bar  after  a  vale- 
dictory drink. 

This  career,  as  will  be  noticed,  is  simply  that  of  Chester  Harding 
or  Francis  Alexander  in  a  more  settled  community  with  another 
quarter  of  a  century  of  development.  There  is  one  marked  differ- 
ence, however,  in  that  Elliott  apparently  never  went  abroad.  In 
spite  of  this  and  of  his  limited  training,  there  is  nothing  provincial  or 
uncertain  about  his  tccluiiqiie.  He  was  for  his  time  the  most  skilful 
portrait  painter  in  the  country,  and  his  work  shows  an  even  level 
of  excellence,  and  a  mature  and  unchanging  method  of  work.      He 


276 


HISTORY    OF   AMHRICAN    PAINTING 


painted  with  a  brush  well  charged  with  freely  flowing  paint,  without 
fumbling  or  working  over.  The  drawing  is  firm,  the  color  fresh  and 
clean,  the  likeness  well  caught,  very  much  like  the  contemporary 
work  of  W'interhalter  and  his  contemporaries  in  France  and,  like 
that,  rather  lacking  in  personal  feeling  and  poetry;  but  yet  a  distinct 
advance  on  Harding  and  Inman.  Flliott  after  his  early  days  painted 
portraits  exclusively  and  mostly  heads,  which  were  excellent.  When 
he  attempted  full-length  figures  the  result  was  much  inferior.  The 
costume  of  the  time  was  inelegant  and  most  of  his  sitters  ungainly, 
and  he  had  little  idea  how  to  compose  a  large  canvas,  painting  the 
boots  and  the  table-cover  with  the  same  insistence  as  the  face. 


Fig.  6i.  —  IIkaly:  Webster  replying  to  IIayne,  Faneuii.  Hall,  Boston. 


Working  with  P^lliott  in  New  York  were  a  number  of  skilful 
practitioners.  Like  him  Thomas  Le  Clear  was  born  in  the  centre 
of  the  state  with  a  taste  for  ]:)ainting,  and  led  the  itinerant  portraitist's 
life  in  his  youth  there  and  in  Canada,  coming  to  New  York  in  1839. 
George  A.  Baker  was  a  native  of  the  city  itself,  whose  father,  said  to 
have  been  an  "  artist  of  merit,"  instructed  him  in  miniature  painting, 
and  he  also  studied  in  the  schools  of  the  Academy  of  Design. 
Both  of  these  men  painted  some  figure  pieces,  but  their  works  are 
mostly  {portraits  and  very  good.  'I'heir  fcc/niiqitc  has  nothing  of 
Elliott's    sure,   facile    handling;   it    is    much    more    uncertain,  more 


FIGURE   AND   PORTRAIT    PAINTING   BEFORE   THE   CIVIL   WAR 


277 


variable;  it  will  not  average  as  good,  but  each  at  times  produces  a 
head  which  has  finer  qualities  than  anything  of  Elliott's.  Baker  and 
Le  Clear  made  short  trips  abroad,  but  these  do  not  seem  to  have 
had  much  effect  on  their  painting.  All  three  made  New  York  their 
home,  exhibited  in  the  Academy,  and  formed  part  of  the  artist  life  of 
the  city. 

Healy,  who  had  a  greater  reputation  than  any  of  them  and 
probably  painted  more  portraits,  —  even  though  Elliott  is  said  to 
have  executed  over  seven  hundred,  —  had  curiously  little  connection 
with  the  metropolis,  executing  some  commissions  there  as  he  did  in 
almost  every  great  city,  but  residing  mostly  in  Boston,  Paris,  or 
Chicago.  He  was  born  in  the  first  city,  his  father  being  a  midship- 
man in  the  English  navy,  who  settled  there  in  his  youth,  married, 
and  became  captain  in  the  merchant  service.  He  was  Irish,  and  the 
Celtic  strain  runs  bright  and  lovable  through  the  temperament  of 
his  son.  In  the  father  it  was  shown  in  the  lack  of  business  capacity 
which  left  his  family  practically  without  resources  on  his  death,  and 
George  Peter  Alexander  Healy,  the  eldest  of  the  five  children,  was 
chiefly  occupied  as  a  boy  in  trying  to  earn  what  he  could  to  help 
his  mother. 

He  made  no  attempt  at  drawing  or  painting  until  he  was  sixteen, 
and  only  then  like  Elliott  because  some  of  his  schoolmates  showed 
him  their  work  and  said  that  he  could  not  do  the  like.  He  succeeded 
beyond  expectation  and  was  fired  with  ambition  to  perfect  him- 
self. He  made  the  acquaintance  of  Miss  Stuart,  Gilbert  Stuart's 
daughter,  wdio  was  herself  a  fair  painter  and  who  helped  him  by 
advice,  by  the  loan  of  an  engraving  of  Guido's  "  Ecce  Homo," 
which  he  copied  in  color  and  sold,  and  especially  by  introducing  him 
to  Sully,  who  after  seeing  his  work  advised  him  to  become  a  painter 
and  aided  him  with  a  kindly  sympathy  which  Healy  never  forgot,  but 
as  long  as  the  old  painter  lived,  whenever  he  passed  through  Phila- 
delphia, he  called  on  him  and  paid  what  courtesy  and  honor  he  could 
to  his  not  too  prosperous  declining  years. 

Encouraged  by  Sully's  approbation  and  when  only  eighteen, 
Healy  hired  a  room,  put  out  a  sign  as  portrait  painter,  and  waited  for 
clients.  Quarter  day  came  before  the  clients,  and  he  was  forced  to 
go  to  his  landlord  and  explain  the  situation,  but  the  latter  was  a 


27S  HISTORY    OF    AMKRICAX    PAINTING 

kindly  man  and  instead  of  ejecting  him  gave  him  orders  for  portraits 
of  his  son  and  son-in-law.  These  were  satisfactory  and,  other  sitters 
following,  a  modest  prosperity  commenced  ;  but  his  sitters  were  all 
men,  and  a  portrait  of  a  lady  by  Sully  had  given  him  a  consuming 
desire  to  paint  a  similar  subject.  Finally  one  of  his  sitters  advised 
him  to  go  to  Mrs.  Harrison  Gray  Otis  and  ask  her  to  sit  for  him. 
Healy  was  at  this  time  nineteen,  abnormally  sensitive  and  shy,  but 
with  that  high  courage  which  sometimes  goes  with  such  a  tempera- 
ment. He  needed  it  all,  for  Mrs.  Otis  was  then  in  the  full  force 
of  her  vouth,  a  beauty,  a  social  leader,  and  in  every  way  an  appalling 
apparition  for  the  youth  of  nineteen,  who  blurted  out  his  message 
after  the  manner  of  his  kind  and  was  surprised  to  find  that  the  great 
lady  after  the  manner  of  her  kind  was  rather  favorably  impressed  by 
his  embarrassment  in  her  presence. 

She  sat  for  him,  got  him  other  sitters,  introduced  him,  and  his 
prosperity  increased  until,  in  1834,  he  got  together  enough  money 
to  start  for  Europe  and  insure  his  mother  against  want  during  his 
absence.  The  spirit  in  which  he  went  is  shown  by  his  colloquy 
with  Morse  in  New  York  just  before  he  sailed.  "  So  you  want  to 
be  an  artist?  You  won't  make  your  salt.  You  won't  make  your 
salt."  "  Then,  sir,  I  must  take  my  food  without  salt."  He  managed 
to  do  better  than  that  and  never  knew  real  want,  but  his  returns  were 
modest  for  a  long  time.  He  had  intended  to  stay  a  year  or  two  in 
Paris ;  he  made  it  his  home  for  sixteen,  when  he  removed  to  Chicago 
in  1855.  There  he  remained  until  1867,  when  he  went  back  to 
l^urope  and  remained  in  Paris  and  Rome  until  in  1892  he  returned 
to  Chicago  to  die  there  three  years  later.  These  were  his  chief  domi- 
ciles, but  he  made  continual  trips  to  England,  to  all  parts  of  the  Con- 
tinent and  to  America  when  he  was  in  Europe,  to  Iiurope  when  he 
was  supposed  to  be  settled  in  America.  The  number  of  his  portraits 
was  enormous;  he  did  not  know  it  himself.  It  is  doubtful  if  any  of 
his  contemporaries  painted  as  man)-,  or  of  more  variously  distin- 
guished sitters.  Webster  and  Clay,  Louis  Philippe  and  Guizot, 
Lincoln  and  (irant,  Thiers  and  (iambetta,  and  many  hundreds  niore 
all  passed  before  his  easel. 

As  to  the  way  in  which  lie  improved  his  opportunities,  there 
is    not   much  to   be   said.      He    had    entered    the    studio    of    Baron 


PIG.  62.  — HUNTIXGTON:    MERCY'S    DREAM,  METROrOLITAN    MUSEUM. 


FIGURE   AND    PORTRAIT    PAINTING   BEFORE   THE    CIVIL    WAR      28 1 

Gros  on  his  arrival  at  Paris  and  worked  there  for  two  or  three 
years.  Couture  passed  through  the  studio  at  the  time,  but  Healy 
did  not  know  him  until  later  when  he  became  intimate  with  him 
and  gave  him  his  unqualified  admiration.  He  was  never  his  pupil, 
but  his  work  is  mostly  according  to  the  simple,  effective  method 
that  Couture  taught  by  word  and  example,  strong  firm  outlines, 
warm  transparent  shadows,  the  lights  built  up  with  solid  opaque 
color  retouched  and  finished  with  transparent  glazes.  It  is  a  good 
method  enough,  though  like  all  methods,  unless  relieved  by  genius, 
apt  to  become  monotonous  when  applied  to  a  mass  of  work.  It  has 
the  advantage  when  once  thoroughly  learned  of  relieving  the  painter  of 
any  doubts  or  hesitancy  of  what  he  is  to  do  next,  each  stage  of  a 
canvas  toward  completion  being  clearly  defined.  In  this  style,  using 
if  anything  a  heavier  impasto,  Healy  painted  his  numberless  portraits, 
with  sound  drawing,  pleasing  color,  and  a  resemblance  which  satisfied 
his  sitters  and  their  families.  At  his  best  his  heads  are  strong,  digni- 
fied, and  characteristic ;  at  his  worst  they  are  insipid  —  not  badly 
executed,  but  heavy  and  uninteresting.  There  is  no  subtlety,  the 
sentiment  is  apt  to  be  commonplace,  and  the  picture  is  held  together 
in  no  harmony  of  artistic  composition,  his  full-length  figures  being 
about  as  ungainly  as  the  average  American  production  of  the  time. 

Besides  his  portrait  groups  he  painted  two  huge  compositions, 
"  Franklyn  urging  the  Claims  of  the  American  Colonies  before 
Louis  XVI"  and  "Webster  replying  to  Hayne."  Both  were  exe- 
cuted in  France  and  shown  at  the  Paris  Exhibition  of  1855  with  a 
dozen  or  more  portraits,  and  the  Webster  gained  Healy  a  gold 
medal,  a  rare  distinction  then.  It  hangs  now  in  Faneuil  Hall  in 
Boston,  a  valuable  historical  monument  (the  heads  are  all  from  life 
studies),  and  a  testimony  to  the  value  of  thorough  French  training 
and  French  surroundings.  No  other  American  artist  at  any  cost  of 
time  and  energy  could  have  produced  the  huge  canvas  which  does 
not  seem  to  have  required  any  special  effort  from  Healy,  who  as  far 
as  schooling  and  tcchniqiic  go  was  entirely  Parisian. 

Healy  lived  to  be  eighty-two,  painting  up  to  the  last.  Another 
artist  of  the  old  portrait  school  only  three  years  his  junior  has  sur- 
passed him  both  in  length  of  years  and  in  hale  and  vigorous  old  age. 
It  gives  a  vivid  measure  of  the  brevity  of  our  national  art  to  recall 


282  HISTORY    OF    AM1:RICAN    PAINTING 

that  when  Daniel  Huntington  was  born  in  1816,  West  was  still  alive 
and  working.  The  long  and  prosperous  life  had  a  fitting  idyllic  pre- 
lude when  a  pretty  Tory  girl  sat  on  a  Peekskill  wall  to  see  the  Revo- 
lutionary army  go  by  and  General  Jed  Huntington,  promptly  and 
profoundly  smitten  by  her  charms,  returned  to  win  her  for  his  bride 
in  spite  of  royalist  and  high  church  prejudice,  quite  in  the  style  of 
the  popular  romantic  plays  of  to-day,  although  the  opposition  of  the 
family  was  hardly  fierce  enough  to  be  dramatic.  This  pretty  girl  was 
Huntington  s  grandmother,  her  daughter  marrying  another  Hunting- 
ton (apparently  no  relation)  and  having  three  sons,  of  whom  the  artist 
was  the  second.  All  three  showed  early  talents  for  drawing,  but  the 
others  finally  entered  the  ministry.  Daniel's  early  efforts  were 
considered  so  remarkable  by  his  mother  that  she  showed  them  to 
Trumbull,  who  was  her  kinsman,  and  got  the  opinion,  "  Better  be 
a  tea-water  man's  horse  in  New  York  than  a  portrait  painter  any- 
where," which  recalls  the  Colonel's  gloomy  attitude  toward  life  and 
the  fact  that  the  ordinary  water  of  the  city  was,  before  the  opening 
of  the  Croton  Aqueduct,  considered  so  bad  that  a  superior  quality 
from  certain  favored  springs  was  habitually  peddled  about  the 
streets. 

While  still  a  boy  Huntington  went  to  New  Haven,  where  he 
prepared  for  and  entered  Yale,  but  after  about  a  year  left  it  for 
Hamilton  College  in  central  New  York.  Here  Elliott  came  on  one 
of  his  itinerant  expeditions  and  painted  heads  of  ten  of  the  stu- 
dents at  a  reduced  rate  (five  dollars  instead  of  eight  dollars),  in  consid- 
eration of  their  taking  a  quantity.  Huntington  was  one  of  the  ten, 
and  a  lasting  friendship  sprang  up  between  him  and  Elliott,  who  en- 
couraged him  to  try  painting  and  gave  him  some  instruction.  On  his 
graduation  he  entered  the  short-lived  art  department  of  the  New  York 
University  recently  founded  by  Morse,  and  also  studied  with  Inman. 
In  1839  he  went  abroad,  painting  in  Florence  and  Rome  for  a  couple 
of  years,  and  from  1851  to  1858  was  in  England;  since  then  his 
work  has  been  done  in  America. 

For  jjrolific  production  of  portraits,  Huntington  fairly  vies  with 
the  men  just  described.  Whether  he  or  Elliott  or  Healy  produced 
the  greatest  number,  is  probably  an  insoluble  riddle  ;  but  Huntington, 
unlike  the   others,  attempted  every  branch   of  painting,   landscape, 


FIG.  63.  — PAGE:    PORTRAIT   OF   MRS.  PAGE,  OWNED    BY   G.  V.  PAGE,  ESQ. 


FIGURE   Ax\I)    PORrRAIT    PAINTING   BEFORE   THE   CIVIL   WAR      285 

genre,  allegory,  and  still-life.  One  of  his  first  excursions  was  into  the 
Catskills,  and  through  his  early  life  he  was  in  sympathy  with  the 
Hudson  River  school,  producing  landscapes  in  their  manner,  includ- 
ing a  huge  Chocorua  Peak.  He  painted  also  figure  pieces,  pietistic 
allegories  like  "Mercy's  Dream"  or  "Christiana  and  her  Children," 
illustrations  of  Irving,  comic,  sentimental,  and  historical  composi- 
tions, culminating  in  sixty  or  more  figures  of  colonial  times  gathered 
about  Martha  Washington  and  representing  the  "Republican  Court." 
Many  of  these  have  been  reproduced  in  engraving  and  have  enjoyed 
a  wide  popularity  continuing  even  down  to  the  present  day,  yet 
all  together  they  are  almost  inconsiderable  beside  the  long  series  of 
portraits  —  divines,  bankers,  merchants,  pillars  of  society  generally, 
with  their  wives,  children,  and  other  relations  near  and  remote  —  that 
has  appeared  in  an  unbroken  sequence  for  nearly  seventy  years. 

Besides  these  purely  professional  labors,  his  high  character,  his 
intelligence,  his  social  talents,  his  long  life,  gave  the  painter  a  lead- 
ing position  among  the  artists  of  the  city.  The  people  who  posed 
to  him  for  portraits  (and  as  said,  they  were  the  best  that  the  city 
or  the  country  at  large  could  show)  held  him  in  the  highest  esteem 
and  looked  up  to  him  as  an  oracle.  He  was  for  years  president  of 
the  Century  Association  and  of  the  National  Academy  of  Design ; 
and  such  other  honors  as  the  country  afforded  were  freely  and 
deservedly  his.  In  view  of  all  this  it  is  an  ungrateful  task  to  define 
the  limitations  of  his  art,  but  it  may  be  pointed  out  that  he  was  unfor- 
tunate in  his  epoch  and  in  his  early  surroundings.  Born  a  quarter  of 
a  century  earlier,  he  would  have  gone  naturally  to  London  and  West, 
and  got  something  of  the  sound  workmanship  and  large  inspiration 
of  Reynolds  and  his  school  ;  a  quarter  of  a  century  later  he  would 
have  been  brought  in  contact  with  the  influx  of  good  Continental 
work  and  would  have  had  a  cosmopolitan  standard  of  excellence. 
As  it  is,  his  early  activity  corresponds  with  the  lowest  ebb  of  taste  in 
the  country,  when  thought  was  most  platitudinous  and  when  concep- 
tion of  real  distinction  in  art  was  smallest. 

The  causes  for  this  have  been  alreadv  aro^ued  at  length  ;  the 
fact  remains  that  Huntinijton  could  not  fail  to  be  affected  bv  such 
surroundings.  Talented,  intelligent,  industrious,  he  embodied  the 
popular  ideals  in  forms  that  are  unexpectedly  artistic  under  the  cir- 


286  HISTORY    OF    AMERICAN    PAINTING 

cumstances.  "  Mercy's  Dream "  for  instance,  done  on  his  return 
from  his  first  trip  al^roacl  wlien  lie  was  but  twenty-six,  is  well  com- 
posed, solidly  modelled,  and  with  a  pleasing  color  scheme.  It  was 
so  popular  that  several  replicas  \vere  made,  and  in  general  his  work 
was  enthusiasticall}'  accepted  by  the  public.  He  did  not  have  to 
struggle  through  long  years  of  neglect  and  isolation  to  perfect  him- 
self, he  only  had  to  produce  as  rapidly  as  possible.  Even  w^hen 
higher  standards  w^ere  slowly  introduced,  his  host  of  friends  still 
remained  true  to  praise  and  purchase.  Moral  considerations,  too, 
had  somethins:  to  do  with  the  matter.  He  said  himself,  and 
not  entirely  unjustly,  a  propos  of  the  Centennial  Exhibition,  that 
many  of  the  French  pictures  were  "evidently  intended  to  pamper 
the  tastes  of  lascivious  men,"  and  surely  it  were  better  to  have 
"  Martha  Washington  "  in  the  house,  however  painted,  than  such 
thinos  as  that. 

This  attitude  of  mind  manifests  itself  in  his  portraits:  his  men 
show  capable  and  benevolent ;  his  women,  dignified  and  well-bred. 
The  goodness  displayed  in  their  countenances  might  be  conven- 
tional and  rather  insipid  —  the  goodness  of  the  Sunday-school  books 
which  formed  so  much  of  the  reading  of  the  time;  but  there  were 
those  w^ho  reviled  them  in  the  galleries  for  their  commonplaceness 
who  would  yet  have  preferred  them  for  family  portraits  in  their 
own  home  to  the  brilliant  work  that  was  adorned  with  more  meretri- 
cious graces.  The  weight  laid  on  these  moral  qualities  probably 
caused  the  purely  artistic  ones  to  be  more  neglected.  The  portraits 
are  "like"  but  with  no  profound  likeness,  and  while  some  are  solid 
and  strongly  painted,  especially  among  the  earlier  ones,  the  great 
majority  are  woolly  in  texture  and  of  an  unpleasant  gray  tone. 

The  jDublic  demanded  nothing  more  than  this,  and  anything  fur- 
ther would  have  meant  all  manner  of  difficulties,  doubtful  success 
with  small  general  recognition;  and  yet  there  were  some  who  struggled 
with  these  unsym])athetic  surroundings,  too  sensitive  to  the  higher 
beauty  to  sink  to  the  commonplace  admired  of  the  general  public, 
and  yet  unable  to  find  in  the  uncertain  maze  of  their  admirations 
and  aspirations  any  sure  path  to  the  expression  of  what  was  in  them. 
Allston  was  the  earlier  type  of  this  spirit,  but  Allston  at  least  had  the 
school  training  under  West. 


FIGURE   AND    I'ORTRAir    rAlNTLNG    JJEFORE    illK    C1\"1L    WAR      287 

William  Page,  a  mind  of  almost  equal  distinction  and  refinement, 
and  with  greater  energy  and  perseverance,  was  driven  from  one  of 
the  great  masters  to  another  as  the  gusts  of  enthusiasm  struck  him, 
glowing  with  their  inspiration,  experimenting  with  their  methods, 
and  leaving  a  mass  of  work  most  various  and  unequal,  and  even  at 
the  best  tentative  and  imperfect.  He  was  born  in  Albany  in  181 1, 
and  was  consequently  the  senior  of  Huntington  by  five  years.  At 
nine  he  came  to  New  York  with  his  family  and  at  eleven  took  a 
prize  at  the  American  Institute  for  an  India-ink  drawing.  In  spite 
of  this  early  inclination  to  the  fine  arts  he  was  at  first  put  in  the  law 
office  of  Frederic  De  Peyster,  but  his  inaptness  for  the  legal  profes- 
sion promptly  showing  itself,  he  turned  to  painting.  He  had  been 
presented  to  Colonel  Trumbull  as  the  accepted  oracle  in  such 
matters,  received  his  usual  tirade  on  the  unprofitableness  of  the 
painter's  career,  and  then  took  employment  under  one  Herring,  who 
painted  "  portraits,  banners,  transparencies,  etc."  After  a  year  in  his 
employ  he  became  a  student  under  Morse,  entered  the  drawing 
school  of  the  Academy  of  Design  when  it  was  founded,  and  his 
name  appears  on  the  list  of  prizes  given  on  the  first  anniversary  as 
the  recipient  of  a  silver  medal. 

This  was  in  1S27,  when  Page  was  only  sixteen  ;  but  the  next 
year  he  broke  from  art  for  a  while,  his  whole  mind  occupied  with 
the  mysteries  of  religion.  He  entered  the  Andover  Theological 
Seminary,  and  though  he  persisted  only  some  two  years  in  his 
study  of  divinity  there  and  at  Amherst,  yet  the  religious  tempera- 
ment endured  with  him  to  the  last.  On  giving  up  the  idea  of 
entering  the  ministry,  he  returned  to  portrait  painting  and  found 
ample  occupation  in  Albany,  New  York,  Boston,  and  elsewhere. 
He  married,  not  happily,  was  divorced,  married  again,  and  it  was  not 
until  1849  that  he  could  make  the  long-desired  trip  to  Italy.  There 
he  entered  into  that  chosen  circle  so  charmingly  described  by  Henry 
James  in  his  recent  life  of  Story,  and  which  with  its  friendship,  its 
atmosphere  of  culture,  its  stimulation  of  all  beautiful  emotions,  its 
freedom  from  all  cares,  made  the  Rome  of  the  fifties  an  Armida's 
garden  to  the  sensitive  American  deprived  in  his  native  land  of  every 
soft,  caressing  touch  of  art  or  poetry. 

After  eleven    years  he  returned  to  America  and  painted  there 


288 


HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 


with  varying  popularity  until  his  death,  \\ith  the  exception  of  a  visit 
abroad  in  1S74  to  study  the  alleged  death-mask  of  Shakespeare. 
He  had  a  home  and  studio  at  Eagleswood  near  that  of  Inness,  with 
whom  he  was  in  peculiar  syni])athy.  One  artist  friend  says  of  them, 
"With  the  single  exception  of  George  Inness  I  know  of  no  man  in 
whom  the  religious  sentiment  is  so  strong  as  in  Page  or  w^ho  has  so  vivid 
and  logical  an  apprehension  of  spiritual  things,"  and  like  Inness  he 


Fic;.  64.  —  (Ikay:  (Jkkkr  Luveks,  Mi-.TKoruLiiAN  Misku.m. 

finally  found  contentment  in  the  Swedenborgian  faith.  That  the  land- 
scapist  left  a  more  enduring  work  than  the  figure  painter  may  be  due 
somew'hat  to  the  fact  that  he  was  the  younger  by  fourteen  years  and 
so  of  a  more  favored  epoch  ;  but  more  that  he  was  a  landscapist 
with  a  group  of  sincere  fellow-workers  about  him  and  an  acquaintance 
with  the  not  too  numerous  examples  of  the  k\)ntaine]j)leau  school, 
whose  excellencies  he  was  quick  to  detect  and  to  adapt  to  his  own 
work.  With  the  figure  painter  it  was  different.  His  master,  Morse, 
worked    in    widely   varying    manners,   and    the   other   contemporary 


FIGURE   AND    PORTRAIT    PAINTING    JiEFORE   THE    CI\1L   WAR      289 

portraitists  resembled  each  other  mainly  in  their  mediocrity.  Any 
knowledge  of  higher  art  had  to  be  worked  out  mainly  from  prints 
and  books,  aided  by  copies  from  the  old  masters,  and  perhaps  an 
original  or  two. 

On  this  shifting  and  insufificient  foundaticjn,  Page  produced  some 
remarkable  work.  He  was  naturally  of  an  investigating  and  inventive 
mind.  He  published  later  a  New  Geometrical  Method  of  7neasuring 
the  Huuian  Figure  and  patented  various  improvements  in  guns 
and  boats.  The  processes  of  painting  interested  him  enormously, 
and  to  the  end  of  his  life  he  was  experimenting  with  all  sorts  of 
mediums  and  methods,  greatly  to  the  detriment  of  his  pictures,  which 
have  almost  invariably  faded  or  darkened.  Some  of  his  earlier  work, 
like  the  "Governor  Marcy  "in  the  New  York  City  Hall,  is  unlike  any- 
thing that  he  was  likely  to  have  seen  at  the  time,  and  must  have  been 
evolved  from  something  read  or  heard  about  the  methods  of  the 
old  masters.  It  is  done  in  a  heavy  impasto,  very  forcible,  strong 
in  color  and  in  contrast  of  lio^ht  and  shade,  well  drawn,  fine  in 
character,  and  with  a  real  sense  of  composition  and  subordination  of 
detail.  It  stands  out  from  all  the  surrounding  portraits,  even  from 
Page's  own  "  Governor  Fenton,"  painted  twenty-five  years  later.  If  at 
this  time  he  could  have  had  access  to  a  few  good  paintings  of  the 
Venetian  school,  it  is  possible  that  his  style  might  have  formed  and 
he  might  have  followed  a  single  path  to  success ;  as  it  was,  he  went 
from  experiment  to  experiment,  and  when  he  finally  reached  Venice, 
by  way  of  Rome,  it  seems  to  have  been  too  late.  His  admiration 
for  the  Venetian  work  was  unbounded,  but  he  had  accumulated  too 
many  tricks  and  crotchets  on  the  way.  His  work  shows  this  mental 
dissipation.  He  painted  in  every  conceivable  manner :  from  the  most 
summary  sketch  to  the  most  minute  finish,  from  the  roughest  to  the 
smoothest  surface ;  but  in  all  there  is  the  struggle  for  something 
beautiful  and  noble.  There  is  distinction  in  his  drawing,  there  is 
character  in  his  heads,  and  more  than  a  perfunctory  echo  of  Venetian 
color  in  his  "Venus."  There  are  portraits  of  his,  rich,  sumptuous,  and 
mellow;  there  are  others  low  in  tone,  subtle  in  tint,  that  have  the 
delicate  refinement  of  a  Whistler. 

A  kindred  spirit  to  Page,  less  profound,  less  energetic,  but  with 
the  same  admirations  and  the  same  ideals,  was  Henry  Peters  Gray, 
u 


290  HIsrOKV    OF    AMERICAN    PAINTING 

some  eight  years  his  junior.  But  Gray,  after  some  preHminary  study 
under  Huntington,  went  to  Italy  when  he  was  twenty  for  a  stay  of 
five  years  and  frequently  returned  there.  He  was  spared,  conse- 
quently, the  struggle  over  the  manner  of  expression,  and  his  tccli- 
niqtic  was  simple  and  not  greatly  varied.  He  had  a  liking  for 
mellow  color,  for  classical  beauty,  and  for  the  balanced  composition 
of  the  school  of  Poussin.  His  allegorical  and  gciwc  figures  still 
retain  not  only  charm  but  vitality.  Toward  the  end  of  his  life  he 
devoted  himself  largely  to  portraits  of  a  soft,  warm  tone,  an  even 
smoothness  of  finish  and  with  an  Italianate  echo  in  the  style,  very 
difficult  to  define,  but  perfectly  recognizable  in  front  of  the  canvas. 

Another  worker  in  Italy  at  this  time  was  John  Gadsky  Chapman. 
Born  in  1808,  he  was  older  than  either  Page  or  Gray,  but  he  sur- 
vived them  both.  His  talent  for  drawing  manifested  itself  when  he 
was  a  boy,  and  he  was  enabled  to  go  to  Italy  to  study,  so  that  he 
began  producing  pictures  of  serious  merit  when  he  was  very  young, 
his  "  Hagarand  Ishmael,"  admired  by  Mrs.  Trollope,  being  executed 
just  as  he  came  of  age.  Besides  painting  he  made  and  engraved 
innumerable  designs  on  wood  and  copper  for  Harper  Brothers  and  the 
American  Tract  Society,  and  also  published  a  drawing-book  which 
went  through  many  editions,  and  which,  setting  out  with  the  principle 
that  "  any  one  who  can  learn  to  write  can  learn  to  draw,"  gave  clear 
and  sound  advice  of  a  modest  sort.  His  own  drawing  is  shown  in 
his  etchings,  which  at  their  best  are  remarkably  good  for  the  time. 
Some  of  his  little  landscapes  have  a  clean,  neat  execution  resembling 
that  of  later  men  like  Lalanne,  for  example.  A  loftier  achievement 
was  the  decoration  of  one  of  the  panels  of  the  Rotunda  of  the 
Capitol  with  tlie  "  Baptism  of  Pocahontas."  In  184S  he  returned 
to  Italy,  and  from  that  date  he  made  Rome  his  home,  though  he 
revisited  America  twice,  dying  in  Brooklyn  in  1890. 

Chapman  was  a  skilful  practitioner,  whose  Italian  landscapes 
and  whose  groups  (whether  of  "  Pifferini  "  or  of  "  Israelites  spoiling 
the  Egyptians")  followed  so  well  the  taste  of  his  time  that  they  have 
not  for  us  to-day  the  interest  of  the  more  personal  efforts  of  Page 
or  even  Gray.  Both  of  these  latter  j^ainted  figure  subjects,  but  like 
Chapman  they  painted  them  mostly  abroad  and  there  was  a  constant 
tendency  to  lapse  into  portraits  or  single  allegorical   figures  on  their 


FIGURK    Ax\D    PORTRAIT   PAINTING    BEFORE    THE   CIVIL   WAR      291 

return  to  their  own  country.  In  fact,  historical  painting  was  almost 
impossible  in  America.  Durand  had  intended  to  devote  himself 
to  such  compositions  when  he  came  back  in  1841,  but  he  found  the 
material  hindrances  too  great.  There  were  no  suitable  studios,  no 
models,  no  costumes,  no  means  of  supplying  the  backgrounds  or  the 
hundreds  of  accessories  needed.  A  historical  scene  could  only  be 
constructed  with  infinite  pains,  involving  heavy  expenditure,  much 
time,  and  doubtful  success.  Domestic  genre,  the  reproduction  of 
the  immediate  life  of  the  time,  requires  a  perfection  of  workmanship 
to  relieve  the  commonplace  subjects,  and  Mount  and  Woodville  had 
had  no  successors. 

Some  figure  painting  there  was  to  satisfy  the  romantic  and  emo- 
tional demands  of  the  day,  heroines  from  Shakespeare  and  Byron, 
scenes  from  popular  authors  and  from  history,  sacred  and  profane, 
but  it  was  all  pretty  shallow.  Any  sentimental  head  was  labelled 
with  any  sentimental  heroine's  name,  and  the  settings  of  histoiy 
in  painting  were  on  the  same  genial,  uncritical  level  as  in  contem- 
poraneous drama  or  opera.  A  hat  with  a  plume,  a  long  cloak, 
and  a  pair  of  tights  did  well  enough  for  any  character  from  the 
fall  of  the  Roman  Empire  down  to  the  Revolution.  There  were 
few  artists  of  merit.  Huntington's  work  has  already  been  men- 
tioned. Thomas  P.  Rossiter,  who  was  born  in  New  Haven  in  18 18 
and  who  studied  there  under  Jocelyn,  went  abroad  with  Durand 
and  Kensett  in  1840,  and  after  a  year  and  a  half  in  London  and 
Paris  went  with  Cole  to  Rome  and  spent  five  winters  there.  He 
came  back  to  New  York  and  occupied  with  Kensett  and  Lang  a 
studio  building  on  Broadway,  which  was  built  for  their  accommoda- 
tion. In  1853  he  went  to  Paris  again  for  three  years,  returning  with 
a  gold  medal  won  at  the  exposition  of  1855.  Rossiter's  work  is 
facile,  rapidly  done,  and  was  popular  in  its  day,  and  for  that  very 
reason  is  antiquated  now.  The  very  titles  tell  the  story,  —  "The 
Last  Hours  of  Tasso,"  "  The  Parting  between  Ruth,  Orpha,  and 
Naomi,"  "  The  Return  of  the  Dove  to  the  Ark,"  "  Morn,  Noon,  and 
Evening  in  Eden."  He  would  have  been  a  mighty  man  indeed 
who  in  the  fifties  could  have  infused  enough  vitality  into  such  sub- 
jects to  carry  tliem  unimpaired  through  half  a  century. 

His  contemporary,  P.  P.  Rothermel  of  Philadelphia,  was  about 


292 


HIST3RV    OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 


a  similar  case.  He  got  liis  first  instruction  from  Bass  Otis  (the 
master  of  Inman),  passed  the  usual  years  abroad,  and  sought  fanie 
with  his  canvases  of  "  De  Soto  discovering  the  Mississippi  "  and 
"Saint  Paul  on  Mars  Hill,"  and  also  by  some  more  modest  classical 
groups  in  the  taste  of  Coomans,  which  retain  yet  something  of  their 
prettiness ;  and  there  were  many,  many  more  whose  names  and 
achievements  the  curious  may  find  detailed  in  Tuckerman's  Book 
of  the  Artists,  and  elsewhere.  They  may  even  discover  here  and 
there  a  picture  of  real  merit,  but  such  finds  will  be  rare.  The  fact 
is  that  the  skill  of  the  time  was  too  small,  the  ideals  too  inartistic  for 
good  work.  More  skill,  more  knowledge,  came  through  the  Diissel- 
dorf  connection  already  spoken  of  in  connection  with  the  studies  of 
the  landscape  painters  and  of  Woodville,  whose  short  life  relegated 
him  to  an  earlier  epoch,  though  born  about  the  same  time  as  the  men 
now  under  consideration.  - 

The  strongest  exponent  of  Diisseldorf  training  is  Emanuel 
Leutze  who  is  counted  as  an  American  artist,  though,  as  in  some 
other  cases,  there  could  be  argument  adduced  in  support  of  an 
opposite  opinion.  He  was  born  in  Wiirtemberg  in  18 16,  but 
his  family  moved  to  the  United  States  soon  after  his  birth  and 
settled  in  Fredericksburg.  The  father  was  a  mechanic  whom 
political  discontent  led  to  emigrate,  and  the  boy  had  the  usual 
bringing  up  of  a  small  inland  town  with  rather  more  education 
than  the  average.  He  did  not  turn  to  art  until  he  was  twenty- 
two,  and  as  soon  as  his  portraits  and  figure  pieces  got  him 
enoueh  monev  and  orders,  he  moved  to  Diisseldorf  and  staved 
there  nearly  twenty  years,  marrying  and  making  it  his  home, 
though  with  some  visits  to  Italy  and  Munich  and  one  to  America 
in  185 1.  Here  he  painted  a  long  series  of  historical  compositions, 
many  of  American  subjects,  —  "The  Landing  of  the  Norsemen  in 
America,"  "Columbus  before  the  Council,"  "Washington  crossing 
the  Delaware."  In  1859  he  returned  to  Anierica  and  made  it  his 
home  for  the  rest  of  his  life.  The  next  year  he  received  a  commis- 
sion from  Congress  to  decorate  a  stairway  in  the  Cnpitol  building 
and  painted  the  "  Star  of  Rmpire,"  being  conscientious  enough  to 
make  a  tri|)  to  the  Rocky  Mountains  for  his  scenery  and  another  to 
Germany  to  consult  Kaulbach  on  the  best  methods  of  fresco  painting. 


K 
< 

W 

N 

H 
D 

U 


FIGURE    AND    PORTRAIT    PAINTING    BEFORK    THE    CIVIL    WAR 


295 


He  continued  the  series  of  historical  works,  "  The  Settlement  of 
Maryland,"  "  First  Landing  of  Columbus "  and  the  like,  and  also 
executed  a  considerable  number  of  portraits. 

In  all  his  works  Leutze  shows  himself  a  typical  Dusseldorfian, 
with  the  enthusiasms  and  admirations  of  the  German  romantic  period 
expressed  in  a  smooth,  dull  tccJiniqiie.  He  was  not  in  the  advance 
guard  of  the  school.  Younger  men  like  Knaus  were  to  put  more 
brilliancy  into  the  handling  and  more  sincerity  into  the  sentiment. 
Leutze  clung  to  the  earlier  idols  and  w-as  a  sort  of  Teutonic  Paul 
Delaroche,  but  without  the  finer  French  taste.  His  taste  in  fact 
now  seems  lamentably  commonplace,  and  though  greatly  admired  at 
the  time,  it  w^as  inferior  to  that  of  many  of  his  American  associates ; 
but  in  knowledge  of  his  craft  as  a  figure  painter  he  was  far  in  advance 
of  them.  He  could  put  together  a  complicated  composition  of 
many  life-sized  figures,  all  soundly  drawn,  in  fairly  accurate  costumes 
and  surroundings,  and  do  it  easily  and  w^ithout  too  much  effort.  It 
was  a  common  accomplishment  in  France  and  Germany,  but  Leutze 
was  skilful  even  among  the  Dusseldorfians.  His  works,  like  similar 
productions  of  the  epoch  in  Europe,  have  not  shown  as  great  artistic 
vitality  as  that  of  less  learned  men  with  more  feeling,  but  from  some 
of  his  American  historical  compositions  a  generation  of  youth  largely 
formed  their  ideas  of  history,  and  one  at  least,  the  "  Washington 
crossing  the  Delaware,"  has  fairly  entered  into  the  national  con- 
sciousness and  not  unworthily.  It  is  a  good  picture  of  its  kind,  well 
drawn,  w^ell  composed,  with  the  details  of  the  scene  realized  by  the 
imagination  until  it  carries  conviction  of  its  reality.  Above  all,  the 
sentiment  of  the  subject  is  there  rendered  in  such  a  way  as  to  be 
understood  by  all.  It  has  taught  to  successive  generations  of  school 
children,  as  text-books  could  not,  the  high  fortitude  and  faith  of 
Washington  amid  discouragements  and  dangers.  There  is  some- 
thinsf  of  German  rather  than  American  in  the  faces,  showino^  w'here 
his  models  \vere  obtained ;  just  as  the  ice-filled  river  was  painted  not 
from  the  Delaware  but  from  the  Rhine.  The  coloring  is  cold  and 
there  is  the  smooth,  monotonous  finish  of  the  Dusseldorf  work.  The 
picture  succeeds  by  its  story-telling  rather  than  its  artistic  side,  but 
it  still  is  the  most  successful  of  Leutze's  works.  The  others  are  all 
less  convincing  in  conception  and  rarely  any  better  painted. 


296  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

Leutze  represents  the  culmination  of  a  certain  type  of  historical 
painting  in  America.  Pictures  Hke  his  are  still  produced  in  Ger- 
many and,  with  modifications  for  national  taste,  everywhere  in  Europe, 
but  they  have  practically  ceased  here  for  causes  which  have  been 
already  suggested.  Their  execution  demanded  a  training  that  was 
not  to  be  had  in  America,  and  the  painter  that  came  nearest  to 
equalling  Leutze's  productions  was  not  only  educated,  but  born 
abroad.  This  was  Constant  Mayer,  who  was  born  in  Besan9on, 
studied  in  Paris  under  Cogniet,  and  did  not  come  to  America  until 
1857.  ^^  ^'^'^-^  ^  younger  man  than  Leutze  by  sixteen  years  and  no 
way  his  equal  in  ability ;  but  in  spite  of  Mayer's  French  birth  and 
training  their  ideals  were  much  the  same.  Mayer's  "  Captain 
John  Smith  and  Pocahontas"  is  manifestly  of  the  same  epoch  as 
Leutze's  "  Settlement  of  Maryland."  With  all  this  Mayer  was  a 
thoroughly  competent  painter  with  a  tendency  to  commonplaceness 
both  in  workmanship  and  taste.  He  painted  not  so  many  great 
historical  compositions  as  smaller  canvases  of  one  or  two  figures, 
reflecting  a  mild  sentimentality. 

To  complete  the  list  of  foreign-born  artists  working  in  New 
York  at  this  time,  mention  should  be  made  of  Louis  Lang,  who  was 
born  in  Wiirtemberg  at  about  the  same  time  as  Leutze,  and  after 
studies  in  Stuttgart  and  Paris  came  to  this  country  in  1838.  His 
w'orks,  mostly  small  pictures  of  a  sort  of  historic  gun^c,  are  hardly 
good  enough  to  require  notice ;  but  Lang  himself  was  a  cheery,  bus- 
tling little  figure  in  the  art  world  for  many  years,  a  constant  exhib- 
itor at  the  Academy,  active  in  the  clubs  and  in  social  circles,  and  trying 
to  infuse  into  the  life  of  the  day  something  of  the  Diisseldorfian 
gemutJilichkeit. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

INCREASE  OF  FRENCH  INFLUENCE 

Successors  of  Leutze.  —  Students  in  France  for  the  Most  Part.  —  Those  that 
STILL  went  to  Italy.  —  Vedder.  —  Coleman.  —  May's  Work  ln  Paris.  — 
William    M.  Hunt 

The  works  of  Leutze  and  his  school,  in  spite  of  their  knowledge 
and  industry,  are  become  old-fashioned  and  strange  to  us,  and  the 
same  may  be  said  of  the  productions  of  Page  and  Gray.  Exceptions 
might  be  made  in  regard  to  some  few  canvases,  but  as  a  rule  they 
lacked  either  inspiration  or  skill,  and  interest  in  them  is  dead.  They 
are  recognized  as  hopelessly  of  another  age,  with  other  methods  and 
other  ideals.  But  another  generation  of  artists  was  rising  not  much 
younger  than  Leutze,  and  who  exhibited  with  the  men  described  in 
the  last  chapter,  but  whose  work  is  living  and  modern  to-day.  Some 
of  the  men  themselves  are  still  alive,  their  powers  unimpaired,  their 
enthusiasm  undiminished,  their  influence  on  the  increase.  They  are 
not  thought  of  as  old ;  they  may  be  in  the  fullest  maturity  of  their 
powers,  exercising  their  greatest  influence,  but  they  form  a  class  by 
themselves. 

There  is  a  clearly  appreciable  difference  between  the  men  who 
were  of  age  when  the  Civil  War  broke  out  and  the  more  numerous 
group  that  studied  in  Europe  in  the  early  seventies,  and  who  for  a 
quarter  of  a  century  endured  to  be  called  "  the  younger  men  "  and 
who  are  at  times  so  referred  to  still,  although  the  imputation  of 
youth  has  lost  something  of  its  accuracy.  Their  predecessors  of  the 
sixties  had  a  different  training.  Studying  abroad  had  not  been  sim- 
plified then  as  now,  there  were  more  difficult  surroundings,  a  greater 
struggle,  and  it  would  seem,  as  a  result,  a  higher  and  more  personal 
success.  This  impression  may  be  largely  due  to  the  longer  lapse  of 
time  which  has  permitted  the  dross  to  fall  out  and  be  forgotten  while 
each  year  has  confirmed  and  strengthened  the  works  of  the  masters, 

297 


298  HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAIMIXG 

and  given  to  them  an  assurance  of  merit  to  which  newer  productions 
cannot  at  once  attain.  Something  of  the  kind  has  happened  to  land- 
scape, and  the  men  under  consideration  were  contemporary  with  and 
rank  beside  our  great  landscapists,  —  Inness,  Martin,  and  the  rest, — 
but  these  latter  in  spite  of  their  differences  of  temperament  were  a  result 
of  an  orderly  evolution  ;  they  were  bound  together  by  certain  similari- 
ties of  aim,  they  belonged,  in  short,  to  a  school.  With  the  figure 
painters  it  was  otherwise ;  their  training  was  as  dissimilar  as  their 
characters.  Whether  they  went  abroad,  as  most  of  them  did,  or 
stayed  in  America,  they  took  as  their  fancy  moved  them  whatever 
they  found  desirable  in  the  whole  range  of  painting  and  adapted  it  to 
their  wants,  and  yet  in  them  all  there  was  a  greater  sanity,  more 
knowledge  of  the  conditions  of  painting,  and  of  what  was  possible 
and  what  not,  than  their  predecessors  like  Allston  and  Page  had. 
Their  emotions  were  not  less  noble,  but  they  were  better  adapted 
for  pictorial  expression. 

Naturally  they  do  not  divide  readily  into  groups.  Each  man 
was  a  law  to  himself.  Paris  had  become  the  favorite  place  for 
study  as  it  was  the  best.  There  May  and  Hunt  and  La  Farge 
sought  each  in  his  own  way  the  principles  of  the  grand  style, 
and  there  Whistler  perfected  his  delicate  talent,  while  Wylie  and 
Mosler  studied  genre.  England  was  practically  deserted,  and  even 
Germany  suffered  a  temporary  eclipse,  though  Eastman  Johnson, 
older  than  most  of  the  others,  studied  a  year  or  so  at  Diisseldorf 
before  going  to  The  Hague.  In  Italy  there  was  no  instruction  worth 
seeking,  but  the  old  inspiration  was  still  there.  The  charm  of  Rome 
and  the  ample  classic  dignity  was  still  potent  with  men  like  Eugene 
Benson,  Vedder,  and  C.  C.  Coleman. 

These  last-named  men  have  a  certain  bond  among  themselves  if 
only  in  their  common  renunciation  of  aims  held  by  nearly  all  their 
co-workers.  It  was  not  methods  of  work  which  they  sought  in  Italy; 
they  had  not  been  charmed  by  the  glowing  color  or  the  beauty  of 
surface  of  the  Barbizon  school,  still  less  by  the  more  accurate  represen- 
tation of  nature  by  its  followers.  What  they  sought,  consciously  or 
unconsciously,  was  a  deeper  sentiment,  a  larger  inspiration.  It  was 
the  old  thirst  for  the  fulness  and  beauty  of  intellectual  and  emotional 
life  which  had  mastered  Allston  and   Page  and  Story  and  so  many 


u 


INCREASE  OF  FRENCH  INFLUENCE  30 1 

others,  and  beside  which  all  that  ^America  had  to  offer  seemed  poor 
and  meagre.  It  is  noticeable,  however,  that  the  men  mentioned 
reached  Rome  in  the  sixties,  and  that  they  have  had  few  followers 
since.  Changed  conditions  in  Italy  largely  account  for  this,  but 
something  is  also  due  to  an  improvement  at  home.  It  is  true  that 
the  exodus  to  Paris  still  continues,  but  the  charm  of  Paris,  subtle 
and  wonderful  as  it  is,  is  still  not  comparable  to  the  spell  that  Rome 
cast  upon  her  visitors  fifty  years  ago.  Paris  is  modern,  and  for  Paris 
it  is  possible  to  develop  an  ec^uivalent  on  this  side  of  the  Atlan- 
tic ;  but  the  old  Roman  society  of  fifty  years  ago  is  as  irrevocably  a 
thing  of  the  past  as  the  douceur  de  la  vie  in  pre-revolutionary  France. 
At  the  same  time,  at  home  the  old  narrowness  and  bareness  of  Ameri- 
can life,  that  by  contrast  gave  such  fascination  to  the  soft,  cultured, 
rather  degenerate  Italy,  has  been  replaced  by  a  culture  broader  and 
more  liberal  even  if  it  still  lacks  mellowness. 

The  most  important  of  these  later  emigrants  to  Italy  was  Vedder, 
as  he  was  also  the  oldest,  having  been  born  in  New  York  City  in 
1S36.  He  had  a  childish  love  of  art,  and  produced  work  of  "decided 
promise,"  even  at  the  age  of  twelve.  From  Tompkins  Matteson,  a 
-^xoXi^Q.  genre  painter  of  the  days  of  the  Art  Union,  he  received  some 
instruction ;  but  before  he  was  of  age  he  went  to  Paris,  where  he 
studied  under  Picot,  but  soon  moved  from  there  to  Rome,  where  he 
spent  five  years,  returning  for  another  five  years  to  America ;  and 
finally,  in  1866,  settling  in  Rome,  which  has  been  his  home  ever  since, 
though  with  visits  to  America  numerous  enough  and  long  enough 
to  keep  him  still  a  "  good  American." 

This  long  stay  in  Italy  has  been  for  no  training  that  the  schools 
had  to  offer,  nor  for  any  inspiration  that  he  gained  from  work  being 
done  there.  In  fact,  he  has  rejected  both.  Even  during  his  first 
visit  when  he  was  still  learning  the  principles  of  his  art  he  frequented 
no  academy,  followed  no  teacher,  and  his  work  at  no  time  had  any 
resemblance  to  that  done  by  living  Italian  masters.  The  affinity 
was  rather  with  the  great  men  of  the  past,  with  Raphael  or  Michael 
Angelo,  but  that  came  later.  Its  early  characteristic  was  its  classical 
quality.  While  the  whole  trend  of  art  at  this  time  was  toward  a 
more  accurate  and  minute  study  of  nature,  a  careful  discrimination 
of  slight  differences  of  form  and  tone,  Vedder  has  consistently  held 


302  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAIN  TING 

to  the  old  simplicit}'  and  has  sought,  not  the  infinite  transitory  de- 
tails that  differentiate  the  individual,  but  the  eternal  type  that  lies 
beneath  them.  This  point  of  view  is  shown  in  his  earliest  work  pro- 
duced during  his  stay  in  America  during  the  sixties.  Technically 
it  is  painted  much  like  other  work  of  the  time,  Init  there  is  a  tendency 
to  minimize  detail,  to  accent  the  characteristic  lines,  and  to  exalt  and 
dignify  the  subject.  A  notable  instance  of  this  is  the  "  Lair  of  the 
Sea-Serpent,"  \vhere  the  monster  of  the  deep,  stretching  his  intermi- 
nable coils  along  the  barren  sand-dunes,  was  in  fact  copied,  and  for 
the  most  part  literally  copied,  from  a  dead  eel  cast  up  on  the  shore, 
but  transfigured  by  the  painter  into  a  type  of  the  terror  and  mystery 
of  the  sea.  This  note  of  mystery,  this  recognition  of  the  infinite  and 
unknowable,  forms,  with  his  classical  feeling,  the  other  characteristic 
of  Vedder's  work.  It  is  not  classical,  but  still  less  is  it  mediaeval  or 
of  the  modern  neurotic  type.  There  are  no  vague  terrors,  no  emo- 
tional hysterics,  no  murky  shades  populated  by  malignant  or  benefi- 
cent spirits.  It  is  calm,  virile,  intellectual,  a  mystery  of  which  Darwin 
and  Huxley  might  w^ell  approve,  recognizing  the  immovable  barriers 
set  to  our  knowledge,  and  that  while  we  may  conjecture  what  is  be- 
yond we  can  have  no  certitude  and  yet  are  forced  continually  to  ask 
the  question  to  which  we  know  there  is  no  answer. 

This  idea,  not  in  itself  a  pictorial  one,  was  expressed  without  any 
of  the  romantic  expedients  of  blurred  outlines,  misty  backgrounds,  or 
forced  effects,  but  with  a  classical  clarity  and  simplicity.  It  appears 
in  a  number  of  small  pictures  of  about  the  same  date  as  the  "  Sea- 
Serpent,"  such  as  the  "  Questioner  of  the  Sphinx,"  the  "  Lost  Mind," 
"  Recognition,"  w^hich  were  accompanied  by  landscapes  and  by  sev- 
eral subjects  from  the  Arabian  NigJits,  realized  with  a  grave  humor. 
After  his  return  to  Rome  his  art  developed  along  these  lines,  some- 
times in  canvases  whose  sole  object  seemed  to  be  arrangement  of 
dignified,  simplified  form,  sometimes  with  a  deeper  meaning  as  in  the 
"  Cumaean  Sibyl  "  or  the  "  Marsyas,"  with  its  underlying  pantheism. 

It  was,  however,  in  1884  that  he  published  his  illustrations  to 
the  Rubaiydt  of  Omar  Khayyam,  his  most  important  work  up  to 
that  time,  and  the  one  which  confirmed  his  reputation.  It  was  not 
that  the  artistic  advance  was  so  great.  A  limited  number  admired 
him  before,  but  his  pictures  were  few,  mostly  in  ])rivate  possession, 


INCREASE   OF   FRENCH    INFLUENCE  303 

and  moreover  their  point  of  view  was  so  personal  that  it  was  not 
readily  seized  in  a  few  scattered  examples.  The  Rubaiydt  revealed 
him  to  the  world.  The  charm  of  the  work  is  very  great.  The  draw- 
ings were  made  on  gray  paper  in  black  and  white  crayon,  and  repro- 
duced by  a  photographic  process  which  was  faithful,  but  which  had 
no  special  charm  of  surface  or  tone.  The  compositions,  as  was 
inevitable  in  such  a  series,  varied  in  merit,  yet  the  general  effect 
was  of  a  unity  profoundly  and  nobly  simple. 

Never  before  had  a  book  of  poems  received  a  pictorial  commentary 
so  sympathetic,  so  beautiful,  and  so  illuminative,  for  it  is  not  too  much 
to  say  that  the  illustrations  deepen  and  illumine  the  sentiment  of  the 
quatrains.  It  took  no  effort  to  fit  them  together.  The  philosophy  of 
the  verses  was  Vedder's  own,  and  one  might  almost  say  that  the  form 
would  have  been  his  also  had  he  expressed  himself  in  words.  They 
bring  up  again  the  great,  simple  problems  of  life  which  have  run 
through  all  variations  of  men  and  manners.  The  art  to  match  them 
must  be  intellectual,  not  sensuous,  depending  for  its  interest  on  some- 
thing other  than  richness  of  color  or  texture  of  surface.  It  must 
be  literary  in  fact,  and  literary  art  is  at  present  much  denounced  in 
theory  and  little  followed  in  practice.  A  picture  which  does  not 
contain  within  itself  all  the  elements  necessary  for  its  enjoyment  is 
false  in  construction  —  a  principle  true  enough  in  its  way,  but  which 
must  not  be  pushed  too  far.  The  greatest  art  has  always  had  in  it 
something  beyond  an  appeal  to  the  eye,  and  to  make  that  appeal 
intelligible  to  the  spectator  has  always  been  the  task  of  the  artist. 
Vedder  has  struggled  with  it  like  another,  aiding  the  meaning  with 
symbols  and  emblems ;  sun-dials  and  rose  leaves,  hour-glasses  and 
nightingales  taking  the  place  of  the  scrolls  with  inscriptions  of  a 
more  primitive  art;  but  the  main  point  is  that  he  has  been  successful. 

The  man  of  ordinary  intelligence  feels  the  thrill  which  is  the  test  of 
a  work  of  art.  It  is  a  triumph  of  Invention  —  that  quality  which  Rich- 
ardson puts  first  in  the  list  of  parts  in  which  the  whole  art  of  paint- 
ing consisted,  though  it  has  fallen  from  its  leading  position  in  these 
days  of  realism.  But  there  are  other  artistic  qualities  besides  inven- 
tion in  Vedder's  Rubaiydt.  The  drawing  has  an  ample,  synthetic 
charm,  the  figures  have  an  appealing  dignity  or  grace,  and  the  com- 
position, constantly  varied,  constructed  on  the  most  different  plans. 


304 


HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 


is  ever  drawn  into  original  and  charming  harmonies  of  mass  and 
line.  The  lack  of  color  and  of  rich  surface  is  not  felt.  It  was  the 
idea  that  occupied  the  artist  and  the  clothing  of  the  idea  with  a  form 
which  should  make  it  intelligible.  It  is  this  which  gives  him  his 
affinity  to  the  fresco  painters  of  the  Renaissance,  and  it  is  worthy  of 
remark  that  like  them  this  knowledge  of  form  enables  him  to  turn 
his  hand  to  sculpture  or  goldsmith  work,  creating  a  bust,  a  piece  of 
jewelry,  or  an  elaborately  decorated  memorial  cup  with  equal  facility. 
Some  of  his  early  works  were  rich  in  color  and  surface  effect,  but  he 
seems  to  have  distrusted  brilliancy  as  a  disturbing  element,  and  even 
before  the  time  of  the  Ruhaiydt  he  had  begun  to  use  opaque  color  in 
his  shadows  until  his  works  had  something  of  the  tone  of  paintings 
in  gouache,  with  no  strong  contrasts  of  light  and  shade.  This  method 
he  still  uses  and  with  peculiar  effect  in  the  decorative  painting  which 
he  has  mainly  produced  of  late  years,  but  this  is  so  recent  that  it 
must  be  discussed  later  under  the  general  subject  of  recent  decora- 
tive painting. 

Associated  in  a  way  with  Vedder  in  Italy,  with  something  of  his 
temperament  and  something  of  his  execution,  is  Charles  Caryl 
Coleman.  One  of  the  earliest  of  his  pictures  was  a  study  of 
Vedder's  studio  with  the  artist  in  it,  and  he  painted  in  the  early  part 
of  his  career  a  number  of  figure  pieces  and  portraits ;  but  of  late  he 
has  turned  more  to  landscapes  and  architectural  subjects,  with  their 
characteristic  lines  strengthened  so  as  to  give  a  decorative,  almost 
monumental,  quality.  This  is  particularly  recognizable  in  the  studies 
of  blossoming  branches  of  apple  or  plum,  which  are  his  most  charac- 
teristic works,  and  where  the  flowers,  studied  directly  from  nature, 
are  yet  arranged  with  such  a  balancing  of  mass,  such  a  delicate 
choice  of  color  in  the  background  and  accessories,  and  so  firm  an 
accentuation  of  their  outline,  that  the  canvas  has  a  charm  of  decora- 
tive unity.  Coleman  has  not  made  his  permanent  quarters  at  Rome, 
but  has  lived  elsewhere,  and  even  at  one  time  had  a  studio  in 
London  ;  but  of  late  years  his  home  has  been  in  a  villa  at  Capri,  never 
to  be  forgotten  by  its  guests,  with  its  orange  trees,  its  vine-clad 
terraces,  and  its  white  walls  leaning  against  tlie  steep  hill. 

Eugene  Benson  also  has  the  echo  of  the  classic  feeling  in  his 
landscapes;  but  of  late  years  he  has  painted  little,  and  he  was  never 


INCREASE   OF    FRENCH    INFLUENCE  307 

very  productive  in  pictures,  turning  quite  as  often  to  writing  as  to 
painting  for  a  means  of  expression. 

Besides  these  there  were  other  artists  in  Italy.  The  visits,  more 
or  less  long,  of  the  landscapists  have  already  been  recorded.  There 
was  always  a  changing  group  of  visitors  admiring  the  marvels  of 
old  art  and  occasionally  stopping  to  work,  and  there  were  some 
permanent  residents  left  over  from  an  earlier  day ;  but  after  the  war 
few  chose  it  for  their  home  or  as  a  place  for  learning  their  art. 
Paris  had  become  the  art  centre  of  the  world.  Leslie  writes  in  his 
memoirs  after  seeing  the  exhibition  of  1855,  "The  enormous  col- 
lection of  pictures  and  sculpture  confirmed  what  I  had  before 
thought,  that  these  arts  have  gradually  declined  in  England  and 
advanced  on  the  Continent  since  the  peace  of  18 15."  But  France 
had  had  for  a  couple  of  centuries  a  sounder  tradition  and  a  more 
thorough  training  than  any  other  country.  It  was  only  the  brilliant 
group  of  English  portrait  painters  that  challenged  her  supremacy  at 
a  time  when  the  exaggeration  of  classical  authority  had  chilled 
original  genius.  When  these  influences  weakened,  she  resumed  her 
old  leadership,  which  even  the  subsequent  fame  of  Munich  hardly 
affected.  The  great  influence  for  good  which  her  rising  school 
exercised  in  American  portraiture  and  landscape  has  already  been 
mentioned.  Outside  the  White  Mountain  school  there  were  many 
that  felt  the  inspiration.  As  far  back  as  the  early  forties,  Winck- 
worth  Allan  Gay  was  working  under  Troyon,  less  than  a  dozen 
years  his  senior. 

Gay  was  born  in  Massachusetts,  and  while  quite  a  boy  his  taste 
for  painting  had  led  to  his  being  taken  into  the  family  of  Professor 
Weir  at  West  Point,  and  receiving  from  him  a  sound  foundation. 
His  art  life,  after  his  return  to  America,  centred  around  Boston, 
where  most  of  his  works  are.  His  career  has  been  long  and  honor- 
able, and  deserving  of  greater  fame  than  it  has  received.  His 
painting  is  better  than  that  of  most  of  the  New  York  men  who  were 
his  early  contemporaries,  but  perhaps  on  that  account  he  never  had 
the  same  pecuniary  vogue  ;  for  even  in  New  York  it  was  not  the  best 
painters  whose  pictures  sold  for  the  highest  prices.  Most  of  the 
men  who  broke  away  from  the  dry,  thin  manner  of  the  early  land- 
scape school  suffered  for  it  financially,  appreciation  coming  to  them 


3oS  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

not  so  much  from  New  York,  where  prices  were  highest,  as  from 
Boston.  It  is  no  small  honor  to  the  latter  city  that  men  like  Rous- 
seau, Troyon,  Millet,  and  Corot,  and  such  American  painters  as  felt 
their  inspiration  and  assimilated  their  spirit,  found  there  cordial 
admirers  and  purchasers  while  the  new  movement  was  still  but 
vaguely  understood  or  accepted  even  in  France.  This  was  owing 
largely  to  the  influence  of  men  like  Gay,  and  more  especially  of 
later  men — Babcock,  Hunt,  and  others, —  who  were  not  (as  in  New 
York)  opposed  by  the  authority  of  other  painters,  older,  more 
respected,  and  bound  together  by  contrary  dogmas.  One  figure 
painter  went  to  Paris  from  New  York  in  those  early  days,  Edward 
Harrison  May,  born  in  1824,  the  same  year  as  Hunt.  But  May  was 
of  English  birth  and  came  to  America  as  a  boy  of  ten,  when  his 
father  was  called  to  the  pastorate  of  one  of  the  Dutch  Reformed 
churches.  It  was  a  cultivated,  talented  family.  His  sister  had  some 
reputation  as  a  writer  of  both  prose  and  poetry,  and  painted  besides, 
and  May  had  an  aptitude  for  the  exacter  sciences  of  mathematics  and 
engineering.  He  studied  under  Huntington,  and  his  early  work  met 
with  fair  success  in  New  York  in  the  days  of  the  Art  Union;  but  he 
soon  left  for  Europe,  and  after  that  most  of  his  life  was  spent  abroad. 
He  was  working  in  Couture 's  studio  in  185 1  and  subsequendy  made 
several  trips  to  Italy  to  study  the  old  masters  ;  he  came  back  to 
America  for  visits  and  finally  died  in  Paris  in  1887. 

May  was  an  excellent  painter  of  the  academic  type.  He  had 
mastered  the  methods  of  work  taught  by  Couture,  which,  in  spite 
of  Couture's  position  as  an  outsider,  were  the  generally  accepted 
methods  of  the  time.  To  these  he  added  a  sound,  large  drafts- 
manship, a  feeling  for  warm,  rich  color  of  the  Couture  type,  and  a 
sense  of  composition  gained  perhaps  from  the  many  copies  that  he 
made  of  old  paintings.  These  copies  were  highly  praised  for  their 
faithfulness, and  his  portraits  were  also  commended;  but  his  reputation 
now  is  mainly  connected  with  his  figure  pieces.  These  were  good- 
sized  canvases  with  life-sized  figures,  —  "  The  Death  of  a  Brigand," 
"  The  Magdalen,"  "  Jewish  Captives  at  Babylon,"  the  regular  Salon 
picture  in  fact,  but  thoroughly  well  done.  The  P^rench  critics  of 
their  day,  including  Theophile  Gautier,  praised  their  sterling  quali- 
ties, and  they  are  not  yet  antiquated  or  out  of  fashion.     They  would 


INCREASE    OF    FRENCH    INFLUENCE 


)09 


still  make  a  good  show  in  the  old  Salon  and  win  medals  and  decora- 
tions, but  there  is  no  intensity  of  personal  emotion  nor  of  personal 
expression,  least  of  all  is  there  any  national  character  about  them. 
May  should  probably  be  considered  an  American  artist,  but  from  his 
work  he  might  have  been  a  Frenchman  or  even  a  German. 

In  all  these  respects  William  Morris  Hunt,  who  preceded  May 
by  a  few  years  in  Couture's  studio,  was  in  strong  contrast  to  him. 
In  the  first  place,  he  was  an  American  by  birth,  race,  and  training, 
having  been  born  in  Brattleboro,  Vermont.  The  family  had  some 
wealth  and  more  than  usual  intelligence.  The  father  was  a  member 
of  Congress,  and  the  sons  all  followed  professional  careers.  Besides 
the  painter,  his  brother  Richard  M.  Hunt  was  an  architect  of  excep- 
tional training  and  influence,  and  two  other  brothers  were  respec- 
tively a  doctor  and  a  lawyer.  William  Morris  was  sent  to  Harvard 
when  he  was  sixteen  and  enjoyed  the  life  there  more  than  he  did 
the  studies,  which  seemed  to  him  tedious  and  barren.  He  succeeded 
in  getting  rusticated,  and  imprudence  during  the  period  of  his  sus- 
pension resulted  in  a  cold  which  threatened  to  become  consumption 
and  which  rendered  a  warmer  climate  necessary.  His  mother  there- 
fore moved  with  her  family  to  Europe,  and  after  visiting  several 
cities  finally  settled  in  Rome  long  enough  for  Hunt  to  begin  work 
with  H.  K.  Brown  the  sculptor. 

The  idea  of  returning  to  Harvard  was  given  up  in  favor  of  a 
life  devoted  to  art.  Hunt  is  said  to  have  worked  for  a  short 
time  in  Paris  under  Barye,  in  1844,  but  soon  went  to  Diisseldorf 
to  study  painting.  He  found  school  discipline  there  as  little 
to  his  taste  as  at  Harvard.  The  school  was  conducted  "  upon 
the  principle  that  the  education  of  art  genius,  of  a  mechanic,  and 
of  a  student  of  science  were  one  and  the  same  thing  —  a  grinding, 
methodical  process  for  the  accumulating  of  a  required  skill,"  and 
he  determined  to  go  to  Pradier  in  Paris  and  recommence  sculpture. 
The  sight,  during  a  flying  trip  to  America,  of  the  "  Falconer,"  by 
Couture,  changed  his  mind  again,  and  he  entered  the  latter's  studio. 
There  he  found  instruction  to  his  taste  —  an  art  feeling  that  he 
could  enter  into,  and  there  he  stayed  some  five  years,  becoming  a  fa- 
vorite pupil,  working  in  the  private  studio  of  the  master,  and  praised 
and  put  forward  by  him. 


3IO  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

But  the  study  of  some  of  the  old  masters  caused  liim  to  doubt 
the  adequacy  of  Couture's  method  and,  soon  after,  an  introduc- 
tion by  W'ilHam  Babcock  to  Millet  caused  him  to  transfer  his 
allegiance  to  the  Barbizon  master  in  spite  of  the  jeers  of  the 
Atelier  Couture.  He  went  to  Barbizon  to  gain  a  greater  intimacy 
with  Millet,  studying  his  works  and  buying  them  as  far  as  his 
means  permitted,  going  on  long  walks  with  him  and  doing  all 
that  he  could  to  enter  into  his  spirit ;  for  Millet  never  taught  any 
pupils  except  indirectly  by  example  and  casual  talk.  After  two 
or  three  years  of  this  life,  in  1855  he  returned  to  America,  settling 
first  in  Newport,  but  working  much  elsewhere  in  New  England, 
especially  in  Boston,  where  he  finally  took  a  permanent  studio  in 
1862.  He  painted  many  portraits,  many  figure  pieces,  was  promi- 
nent in  art  circles,  executed  two  remarkable  decorations  for  the 
Capitol  at  Albany,  and  was  an  active,  artistic,  and  social  influence 
up  to  the  day  of  his  death,  in    1879. 

It  is  not  easy  to  give  a  satisfactory  appreciation  of  the  work 
and  influence  of  Hunt.  He  belongs  to  the  class  of  which  Allston 
was  the  type  and  precursor,  ardent  young  Americans,  intelligent, 
enthusiastic,  feeling  the  charm  of  the  accumulated  art  of  the  Old 
World  with  a  freshness  and  an  intensity  to  which  the  native  mind, 
dulled  by  constant  familiarity,  rarely  attains.  Nor  was  it  all  vague 
emotion.  The  men  produced  work  full  of  promise,  but  the  promise 
was  never  quite  fulfilled.  When  they  returned  to  America  there 
was  something  in  their  surroundings  or  in  themselves  that  checked 
their  development.  In  the  case  of  Hunt,  it  was  not  the  lack  of 
sympathy.  If  the  great  mass  were  wholly  indifferent  and  the 
majority  of  the  artists  rather  hostile,  yet  the  people  with  whom 
he  came  in  contact  were  his  friends  and  admirers,  comprehending 
and  encouraging  him.  Few  artists  have  had  surroundings  more 
sympathetic.  What  he  lacked  was  professional  criticism,  a  few 
intimate  friends — or  enemies  —  who  were  of  the  craft,  knowinsf  of 
what  the  art  was  capable,  understanding  his  aims,  and  insisting  on 
their  complete  achievement  rather  than  taking  the  intention  for 
the  accomplishment.  Such  criticism  was  peculiarly  necessary 
to  Hunt,  for  he  was  not  completely  master  of  his  craft.  He  was 
right  to  reject  the   drudgery  of   Diisseldorf,  which  would   certainly 


IIG.    68. —  HUNT:    TllK    BATHERS. 


INCREASE  OF  FRENCH  INFLUENCE 


3^3 


have  limited  his  development ;  but  though  later  he  worked  hard 
under  Couture,  who  was  an  excellent  draftsman,  his  drawing  lacks 
some  of  the  prosaic  but  necessary  Diisseldorfian  qualities.  He 
was  just  emerging  from  the  student  stage  when  he  broke  away 
to  follow  Millet,  and  a  dozen  years  of  the  severest  self-training  should 
have  followed.  Something  of  the  kind  there  was  but  not  enough, 
and  he  remains  to  the  end  an  amateur,  not  only  in  the  sense  of 
loving  his  art,  but  also  in  lacking  the  sure  professional  mastery. 

His  first  exhibited  work,  a  portrait  of  his  mother  done  in  1850,  is 
purely  a  work  of  Couture's  atelier,  and  the  same  may  be  said  for 
the  "  Prodigal  Son,"  though  there  the  handling  had  become  looser 
and  freer  so  that  it  was  not  very  well  received.  His  other  early 
figure  pieces  mostly  show  the  same  influence,  though  yielding  to 
that  of  Millet  in  his  "Sheep  Shearing"  and  some  smaller  canvases. 
It  was  after  his  return  to  America,  when  he  had  forgotten  or 
assimilated  the  example  of  his  French  masters,  that  his  most  per- 
sonal and  original  work  was  produced,  figure  pieces  like  the  "  Boy 
and  the  Butterfly,"  his  many  portraits,  his  landscapes  and  still-life 
studies,  culminating  with  his  decorations  in  the  Albany  Capitol. 

The  work  is  most  varied  and  most  unequal,  but  it  leaves  an  un- 
satisfied feeling  in  the  mind.  It  was  so  promising,  so  promising 
to  the  end,  but  somehow  it  never  culminated  into  masterpieces, 
rounded  and  complete,  where  the  painter  could  be  said  to  have 
given  the  full  measure  of  his  temperament.  The  Albany  deco- 
rations approach  nearest  such  a  standard,  but  done  under  unfavor- 
able circumstances  and  in  almost  impossible  time  limits,  they  were 
still  tentative  and  incomplete.  It  might  have  been  otherwise  if  the 
scheme  for  the  complete  decoration  of  the  Capitol  had  been  given 
him,  as  proposed,  and  his  life  had  been  spared  to  complete  it. 

This  regret  for  what  might  have  been  should  not  belittle  Hunt's 
actual  achievement.  His  was  a  strong,  artistic  temperament,  per- 
sonal and  not  to  be  turned  into  a  mere  echo  of  Couture  or  any 
other  master.  He  had  not  only  the  emotional  delight  in  beauty 
common  to  so  many  young  Americans  in  Europe,  but  his  emo- 
tional perception  was  artistic.  He  saw  form  simply,  nobly,  and  in 
those  great  masses  that  give  character,  and  he  was  besides  a  colorist. 
There  is  a  certain   ability  to  give   a  warm,   rich  tone  to  a  picture 


314  HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

which  the  competent  student  gets  in  a  good  school.  In  this  sense 
May  has  just  been  called  a  good  colorist,  but  Hunt  was  something 
different  and  beyond.  He  was  a  colorist  as  Inness  was,  and  felt 
naturally  the  delicate  harmonies  and  contrasts  of  nature ;  he 
remembered  them  and  recorded  them  in  all  their  strenofth  or 
subtlety.  Coloring  was  not  a  kind  of  varnish  to  be  spread  over 
the  picture;  it  was  the  picture.  Canvases  like  the  "  Bathers "  or 
the  "  Boy  and  the  Butterfly,"  his  landscapes  or  still-life  studies, 
are  simply  records  of  his  delight  in  beautiful  tones.  Even  some 
of  the  earlier  figure  subjects  are  relieved  from  commonplaceness 
by  the  luminousness  of  a  neck  or  a  bit  of  dress  against  the  sky. 
This  feeling  for  color  united  with  that  for  large,  simple  form  made 
Hunt  impatient  of  minute  handling  and  forced  him  into  a  freer 
technique  than  had  been  previously  used  in  America,  and  it  is 
through  this  large  handling  and  the  feeling  for  texture  involved 
with  it  that  he  exerted  his  greatest  influence. 

We  have  to  recall  the  opposition  and  abuse  which  so  conven- 
tional a  thing  as  his  "  Prodigal  Son  "  aroused  when  exhibited  at  the 
Academy  of  Design  and  at  New  Haven  to  understand  how  universal 
was  the  laborious,  inartistic  technique  evolved  from  Diisseldorf  and 
an  untrained  native  taste.  In  landscape,  Inness  and  Homer  D. 
Martin  broke  away  from  it,  bringing  down  upon  themselves  the  re- 
proaches and  ridicule  of  their  confreres,  but  in  figure  painting  Hunt 
was  the  first.  He  was  hardly  master  enough  of  his  craft  to  lead  the 
way  with  absolute  authority.  He  could  draw  accurately  enough  in 
the  Couture  manner  if  he  set  himself  seriously  to  the  task,  but  in  the 
swift,  dashing  work  that  he  loved  he  was  not  sure  enough  to  do  with 
certainty  what  he  would.  When,  for  instance,  he  painted  a  larger 
version  of  the  "  Bathers,"  he  neither  corrected  the  faults  nor 
retained  the  freshness  of  the  original  sketch,  and  his  portraits  were 
generally  left  unfinished.  He  worked  on  them  impetuously  for 
a  few  hours,  striking;  in  the  broad  oeneral  masses,  and  then  his 
interest  would  die  out.  He  shirked  the  labor  of  carrying  the 
sketch  to  completion  ;  but  when  his  enthusiasm  lasted  to  the  end,  he 
produced  canvases  like  the  "Chief  justice  Shaw,"  admirable  in 
character  and  workmanshij),  —  and  nnuh  derided  in  Boston  when 
first    shown.        His    message   was   that   nothing    but   the   essential 


INCREASE   OF    FRENCH    INFLUENCE  315 

should  be  painted,  and  nothing  unless  the  artist  felt  an  immediate, 
personal  enthusiasm  in  his  work.  It  is  this  that  gives  vitality  to 
his  paintings,  and   he  taught   it  equally  in   his  life. 

Hunt  was  a  personage  in  Boston.  His  irrepressible  energy,  his 
magnetism,  his  outbursts  of  praise  or  blame,  his  picturesque  phrase, 
his  catholic  taste,  so  independent  and  sure  that  he  was  an  apostle  for 
Japanese  art  as  well  as  for  the  Barbizon  school,  all  gave  him  a  power 
which  he  exercised  nobly.  At  Newport,  in  the  early  days  of  his 
return,  he  greatly  influenced  La  Farge  and  later,  when  J.  Foxcroft 
Cole  and  Bicknell  and  other  early  students  in  Paris  came  back,  he 
bought  their  pictures  and  did  what  he  could  to  make  their  path  easy. 
At  the  sight  of  some  of  Vedder's  pictures  he  wrote  to  the  artist, 
whom  he  did  not  know  at  all  personally,  and  organized  an  exhibi- 
tion of  his  works  in  Boston,  which  was  successful  in  every  way. 
Special  fame  has  been  gained  by  the  class  of  young  ladies  that  he 
taught,  and  his  incisive  admonitions  to  them  have  been  garnered 
in  a  book.  It  is  not  recorded  that  any  of  his  pupils  gained  great 
distinction  in  art,  but  one  envies  them  their  excitement,  their 
loyalty  to  their  master,  their  illusions.  Hunt  made  them  share  his 
emotions,  which  was  an  education  in  itself;  he  could  not  make  them 
share  his  w^ork,  and  even  in  his  own  case  the  emotions  were 
probably  finer  than  the  work.  He  may  have  thought  so  himself, 
for  one  of  his  sadder  sayings  is,  "  In  another  country  I  might  have 
been  a  painter."  Perhaps  with  more  encouraging  surroundings 
his  art  might  have  been  more  complete,  but  his  influence  could 
hardly  have  been  greater  for  good.  He  was  of  his  time  and  helped 
to  shape  it,  and  as  he  retorted  to  some  one  who  spoke  to  him  of 
Allston,  feeling  perhaps  a  sort  of  parallelism  in  their  lives,  "  Well, 
there  is  one  thing  they  can  say  of  me  :  that  I  have  seen  something 
of  what  has  been  going  on  around  me." 


CHAPTER    XVII 

LA    FARGE    AND   WHISTLER 

John  La  Faroe.  —  His  Life.  —  His  Training.  —  His  Temperament.  —  Early  Paint- 
ings. —  Stained  Glass  and  Decorative  Work.  —  Character.  —  Whistler.  —  His 
Life.  —  Series  of  his  Works.  —  His  Position  as  an  Artist.  —  His  Character. 
—  His  Training.  —  Quality  of  his  Work 

This  French  influence  culminated  in  two  artists  almost  exactly 
contemporaries  by  birth,  and  who,  though  dissimilar  in  character,  in 
training,  and  in  almost  all  the  circumstances  of  their  lives,  are  yet 
approximately  equal  in  achievement;  and  who,  moreover,  are  united 
by  a  peculiarly  intense  refinement  of  artistic  perception.  John 
La  Farge  was  the  younger  of  the  two,  being  born  in  1835,  a  year 
later  than  Whistler;  but  his  work  connects  with  and  carries  on,  in 
a  way,  that  of  Hunt  and  May,  while  Whistler's  formative  influences 
and  surroundings  were  exclusively  foreign.  The  career  of  La  Farge, 
is  part,  and  a  large  part,  of  the  intellectual  development  of  America. 
It  may  be  claimed  as  indisputably  our  own,  and  yet  the  fact  that  he 
w^as  of  undiluted  French  blood  seems  to  help  to  explain  it. 

His  father,  an  officer  in  the  French  Marine,  came  to  this  country 
in  1806,  by  way  of  the  West  Indies  and  Louisiana,  finally  reach- 
ing New  York,  and  there  marrying  a  daughter  of  one  of  his  com- 
patriots, an  emigre  of  the  Revolution.  From  plantations  in 
Louisiana  and  purchases  of  lands  elsewhere,  the  elder  La.  Farge 
became  rich,  according  to  the  standards  of  his  day,  and  his  .son  grew 
up  surrounded  not  only  with  material  comforts,  but  with  means 
of  culture,  which  r'rench  influence  made  completer  and  ampler 
than  common.  There  were  books,  there  were  pictures,  and 
his  maternal  grandfather,  M.  Binsse  de  St.  Victor,  who  himself 
painted  miniatures,  taught  him  drawing.  When,  after  some  study 
of  the  classics  and  some  of  law,  he  visited  Paris,  his  father  advised 
him   to  take   up   the  study  of   art  as   an   accomplishment,  and    he 

316 


WHISTLER:     PORTRAIT   OF   ARllST'S   MOTHKR,   GALLERIE    DU    LUXEMBOURG 

PARIS. 


JrHx  !,.•   Fa- 


^, 


;.  — His 


irtih. 


CGd  "jid  H'h  ^Tilar  in  chara^ 

trai  ircumst 

.  yea.r 
on,  in 
lences 
reign.    The  career  of  iLa  Farg( 

IS  ^art,  itellectual  '  Americ 

It  ""may  v  our  own, 

was  of  -  ^    ' 

His........ 

in   1806,  by  ^^  t  Indi 

ing  Neis^'York»- arid  there  marn 

pat  rkyGi    the 

Loi  ises  of  jciiid^  clsewlh 

becaii  '     ''  irds  of  1 

up    SUl  fi'l    '■^' 

of   cull 

than     I  books,    th'  ,    and 

his   maternal    gHa^  M.    Binsse   de  tor,   wJio    himself 

painted   miniatures,  Laught  him  drawin;. 

of  the  cins  '  \vv,  he  visile. 1 

him'^l^^^L  ,    .     ,.,.-:,  'of W^lfc^l^F-^. _.,  .         'W/ 

.8IHAT 

316 


LA    FAROE   AND   WHISTLER  317 

entered  the  Atelier  Couture,  moved  thereto  by  the  advice  of  May, 
who  recommended  his  own  master.  He  entered  simply  as  an  ama- 
teur and  did  not  remain  long,  though  Couture  was  sympathetic  and 
approved  his  work,  fostering  his  individuality  and  advising  him  to 
study  the  masters  in  the  Louvre ;  so  he  made  drawings  from  them 
and  afterward  copied  the  sketches  of  the  old  masters  in  Munich 
and  Dresden,  and,  during  a  trip  to  England,  saw  and  studied  the 
works  of  the  Pre-Raphaelites. 

All  of  this  was  combined  with  personal  and  social  intercourse 
with  the  artists  and  critics,  to  whose  inner  circle  his  family  con- 
nections gave  him  admission.  Paul  de  St.  Victor  was  his  cousin, 
and  he  met  men  like  Theophile  Gautier,  Charles  Blanc,  Puvis  de 
Chavannes,  and  later  Rossetti  and  Millais.  With  all  this  he  was 
continually  testing  the  work  that  he  saw,  the  theories  that  he 
heard,  by  his  own  reasoning,  by  his  own  emotions.  He  was  not 
grubbing  at  the  drudgery  of  a  profession  ;  he  wished  to  appreciate, 
to  understand,  to  enjoy,  but  not  to  become  a  painter ;  and  so,  his 
travels  over,  he  returned  to  New  York  and  entered  a  lawyer's  ofifice. 
The  study  of  the  law  was  not  likely  to  prove  entirely  congenial  to 
him,  and  it  is  on  record  that  he  combined  it  with  much  miscella- 
neous reading,  thinking,  and  dreaming. 

But  the  final  break  seems  to  have  occurred  when  Hunt  returned 
from  France.  His  nature,  so  frank,  so  enthusiastic,  so  buoyant,  so 
appreciative  of  what  was  beautiful  or  noble,  impressed  the  younger 
man,  who  deserted  the  of^ce  and  followed  him  to  Newport,  and 
there  worked  under  his  influence  and  counsel.  He  painted  every- 
thing—  landscape,  figures,  still-life  —  until  1866,  when  there  came  a 
severe  illness,  from  which  it  took  him  several  years  to  recover,  during 
w^hich  time  he  made  drawings  for  illustrations.  In  1873  there  was 
another  short  trip  abroad;  in  1876  came  the  decoration  of  Trinity 
Church  in  Boston,  the  next  year  that  of  St.  Thomas  in  New  York, 
and  other  decorative  work  followed,  but  he  now  became  especially 
interested  in  stained  glass.  His  attention  had  first  been  called  to  it, 
in  1873,  by  the  defects  which  he  saw  in  the  work  done  in  England  ; 
and  experiments  that  he  made  upon  his  return  aroused  his  interest, 
until  finally  his  chief  energy  was  given  to  the  new  development  of 
the  art,  though  there  was  time,  also,  for  the  direction  of  decorative 


3l8  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

work  in  marble  or  wood,  with  additions  of  ivory,  mother-of-pearl,  and 
the  like.  Then  in  1886  came  failing  health  again,  and  a  trip  to 
Japan,  followed  by  one  to  Samoa  and  the  South  Sea,  and  after  that 
more  stained  glass,  writing,  lecturing,  and  painting  taken  up  again 
with  enthusiasm  and  increasing  power,  gaining  in  strength  and 
ripeness  up  to  the  present  time. 

If  any  one  acquainted  with  the  history  of  American  art  could 
know  the  career  of  La  Farge  without  knowing  his  works,  the  conclu- 
sion would  be  inevitable  that  here  was  another  Allston,  with  less 
brilliant  promise  in  his  youth,  and  less  complete  failure  at  the  end, 
but  still  a  man  whose  inspirations  and  emotions  must  wither  within 
him  for  lack  of  adequate  means  of  expression  and  a  comprehending 
public.  The  training  is  so  manifestly  insufficient,  the  New  York  of 
the  seventies  was  so  hopelessly  material  in  its  interests !  That  the 
achievement,  in  spite  of  difficulties,  has  been  so  high,  that  the  appre- 
ciation, though  limited,  has  been  so  sincere,  after  all  honor  has  been 
given  to  the  artist,  yet  leaves  a  feeling  of  satisfaction  that  such  a  life, 
if  not  fostered  by  its  surroundings,  has  at  least  become  possible  in 
America.  Granted  the  exceptional  quality  of  the  talent,  yet  there 
must  have  been  culture  to  recognize  it,  wealth  to  employ  it,  and 
some  surroundings  of  beautiful  works  of  art  to  foster  it,  and  all  of 
these  he  found  somehow  in  his  own  country.  Certain  great  tradi- 
tions of  the  masters  he  possesses  as  no  other  of  his  compatriots ;  but 
of  actual  study  in  Europe  he  has  had  less  than  any  of  them.  His 
training,  in  fact  (granting,  as  before,  his  talent),  casts  grave  doubts  on 
the  methods  of  education  for  artists  now  universally  adopted.  He 
made  no  long  series  of  laborious  studies  of  weary,  ungainly  nude 
models,  years  of  which  task  work  are  now  considered  the  unavoid- 
able jirelude  to  a  painter's  career.  He  seems  to  have  rarely  done 
anything  where  the  result  was  not  intended  to  be  in  itself  beautiful 
or  interesting.  Difficulties  did  not  deter  him.  Of  all  things  for 
a  beginner,  the  copying  of  sketches  by  the  great  masters  would  seem 
to  be  the  most  impossible  and  impractical.  They  are  either  the  hasty 
record  of  some  conception,  careless  of  accuracy,  the  lines  running 
helter-skelter  at  the  instinct  of  the  hand,  and  the  result  gained,  the 
artist  himself  hardly  knows  how  ;  or  else  they  are  careful  notation 
of  details,  a  head,  a  hand,  a  cast  of  drapery,  to  take  their  place  later 


LA    FARGE   AND   WHISTLER  32 1 

in  a  larger  work.  They  but  supplement  an  unexpressed  conception 
in  the  artist's  mind.  They  are  the  most  intimate  revelation  of  his 
nature  and  admirably  adapted  to  enlarge  the  insight  and  enthusiasm 
of  the  amateur,  but  apparently  most  unsuitable  to  teach  proportion, 
construction,  and  the  other  fundamentals  of  the  craft. 

Yet  it  is  through  this  sympathetic  insight  not  only  into  the  appear- 
ances but  into  the  spirit  of  things  that  La  Farge's  art  has  developed. 
The  association  with  Hunt  was  fortunate  for  him,  not  only  in  finally 
turning  him  to  art  (if  indeed  it  was  the  deciding  influence),  but  be- 
cause it  gave  him  a  friend  and  counsellor,  sympathetic,  enthusiastic, 
and  peculiarly  qualified  to  correct  the  defects  of  his  training  and  tem- 
perament ;  for  the  natural  tendency  of  La  Farge  seems  to  have  been 
toward  an  over-interest  in  detail,  a  supersubtle  discrimination  of 
tones  and  forms  which  gave  him  sympathy  with  the  Pre-Raphaelites 
in  England,  and  made  Hunt  dispute  with  him  for  "  paying  too  much 
attention  to  refinements  which  not  one  artist  in  a  hundred  would  un- 
derstand." This  intense  perception  of  minutiae  was  always  retained, 
so  subtle,  so  characteristic,  that  it  can  hardly  be  appreciated  except 
from  his  own  works  or  words.  The  following  illustrates  it  as  well, 
and  no  better,  than  a  hundred  other  extracts  that  might  be  made. 
He  is  speaking  to  a  pupil  who  is  trying  to  paint  a  dull  gray  sky:  — 

"  The  sky  that  we  are  now  looking  at  is  not  only  modelled  by 
what  we  call  light  and  shade,  so  delicately  that  we  find  it  difficult 
to  trace,  but  it  is  modelled  by  varieties  of  color. 

"As  you  will  see,  toward  the  horizon,  I  mean  our  horizon,  because 
the  tops  of  the  houses  are  over  the  horizon,  it  is  a  little  yellower. 
The  clouds  that  float  in  it,  of  which  we  mainly  see  the  shadows, 
are  more  violet;  the  upper  sky,  where  the  clouds  are  thinner,  is 
greener,  meaning  that  there  is  the  faintest  suggestion  of  blue,  and, 
if  you  will  watch  a  little,  you  will  notice  that  all  this  mass  of  low 
cloud  where  it  is  thicker  and  makes  shadows  as  it  comes  nearer 
to  the  brick  buildings,  seems  to  harmonize  with  them  and  you  feel 
that  there  is  a  little  pink  or  rosy  hue  more  or  less  everywhere. 

"  Were  the  sky  to  appear  suddenly,  you  might  see  these  fog- 
clouds  —  those  that  are  low  down,  at  least,  look  reddish ;  but  as  you 
have  no  contrast  to  help  you,  your  eye  is  not  very  sensitive  to  this. 
Only  if  you  do  not  feel  it  and  give  some  suggestion  of  it,  you  keep 


32  2  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

on  wondering  why  your  painted  sky  is  so  cold  and  tea-boardy." 
The  reader  wonders  what  the  young  lady  pupil  made  of  such 
advice.  It  contrasts  strongly  with  Hunt's  Talks  on  Art,  where  the 
counsel  is  always  of  simplicity,  boldness,  unity,  so  that  it  is  fair  to 
suppose  that  La  Farge  owes  much  to  him  in  that  direction,  as  well 
as  in  color,  texture,  and  handling,  the  influence  in  these  latter  c|uali- 
ties  being  clear  in  many  of  the  earlier  pictures. 

Of  La  Farge's  work  as  a  whole,  there  is  not  space  to  speak  ade- 
quately. It  is  not  so  great  in  quantity,  considering  the  long  life,  the 
constant  labor,  but  it  is  so  varied  in  subject,  in  feeling,  in  scale ;  it  is 
executed  in  so  many  different  mediums,  employed  in  such  unex- 
pected manners  that  it  does  not  lend  itself  to  generalizations.  Each 
work  has  its  own  mood,  its  own  message,  its  own  charm,  so  individ- 
ual and  appealing  that  it  seems  impossible  to  pass  it  over  without 
description  and  analysis.  Take  the  earlier  work  at  random,  the 
"  Portrait  of  a  Boy  with  a  Dog,"  the  "  Paradise  Valley,"  the  little 
"  Venus  Anadyomene,"  a  gem  that  might  have  been  made  in  Bel- 
lini's studio  by  some  young  fellow-student  of  Titian  or  Giorgione, 
the  "  Saint  Paul."  These  are  the  more  important,  but  there  were  also 
little  things  remembered  vividly  after  thirty  years,  —  a  small  gray 
panel  that  seemed  perfectly  blank  until  suddenly  the  eye  penetrated 
into  it  to  see  through  the  fine,  soft  fog  a  line  of  headlands  above 
a  smooth,  swelling  sea,  a  study  of  azaleas  with  their  fragile  delicacy 
rendered  in  little  square  dots  of  color  to  serve  as  a  pattern  for  cross- 
stitch  embroidery,  a  large  water-color  with  an  iridescent  Spanish 
mackerel,  and  a  branch  of  apple  blossoms  done  in  broad,  transparent 
washes.     What  unity  of  subject  or  execution  is  there  in  all  these! 

The  "Boy  with  the  Dog"  or  the  "Saint  Paul"  show  traces  of 
Hunt ;  but  they  are  not  like  Hunt's  work,  nor  like  each  other,  the 
rest  have  not  even  that  in  common.  Their  many-sidedness  extends 
to  the  tcchniqiie,  which  matches  the  subject  and  scale  of  the  work 
with  absolute  fitness,  from  the  enamel-like  smoothness  of  the  "Venus" 
to  the  broad  brush  work  of  the  "  Boy  and  Dog  "  or  the  rough,  crumbly 
surface  of  the  "  Saint  Paul,"  and  the  same  may  be  said  of  the  inspira- 
tion, of  the  inner  quality  of  his  subjects  which  the  artist  has  stripped 
of  the  unessential,  giving  their  very  spirit  so  that  we  feel  the  imma- 
nent personality  of  goddess  or  saint,  of  landscape  or  flower.     The 


LA    FAROE   AND   WHISTLER 


323 


amount  and  intensity  of  mental  effort  involved  in  this  only  artists 
can  know  ;  but  thought  is  lavished  everywhere  in  a  way  that  often 
seems  entirely  out  of  proportion  to  the  work  in  hand.  The  draw- 
ings are  full  of  it  and  it  gives  them  a  persistent  vitality.  A  dozen 
or  so  illustrations  made  for  a  juvenile  magazine  or  for  poems,  some 
of  them  unfinished  and  unpublished,  are  not  likely  to  be  an  impor- 
tant item  in  an  artist's  work ;  but  no  critic  of  La  Farge  fails  to  notice 
them  at  length,  their  quality  is  of  such  distinction.  And  this  is 
gained  by  taking  infinite  pains.  There  is  a  bit  of  background  in 
one  of  the  Enoch  Arden  series  (utterly  destroyed  by  the  wood- 
engraver),  the  study  for  which,  about  an  inch  square,  is  monumen- 
tal in  line  and  mass ;  while  in  the  best  known  of  all,  the  "  Wolf 
Charmer,"  apart  from  all  more  obvious  merits,  the  fringe  of 
woods  in  the  extreme  distance  is  most  interesting  in  the  varied 
character  and  grouping  of  the  tree  trunks,  while  every  line  and  spot 
continues  and  strengthens  the  composition. 

These  qualities  of  inspiration,  of  handling,  of  drawing  (and  some- 
thing more  might  be  said  of  this  last),  have  been  insisted  upon 
because  the  great  reputation  of  La  Farge  has  been  as  a  colorist,  and 
rightly  so;  but  color  with  him  is  not  an  external  grace  added  to  the 
picture,  nor  is  it  the  subject-matter  as  sometimes  with  Hunt;  it  is 
like  the  composition  or  the  brush  work,  a  means  of  conveying  the 
emotion.  Fine  color  is  probably  no  rarer  than  fine  draftsmanship, 
—  and  yet  perhaps  it  may  be  so  now,  for  the  French  who  have  been 
the  leaders  of  modern  art  have  always  leaned  toward  form  rather 
than  color, — but  draftsmanship  that  is  not  fine  can  still  save  itself  by 
a  literal  fidelity  that  satisfies  the  intellect;  while  color,  like  music, 
makes  a  direct  appeal  to  the  emotions  and  can  be  judged  only  by 
them.      If  they  are  unmoved,  it  is  naught. 

The  drawings  of  La  Farge  have  no  "  color,"  as  the  term  is  used 
with  reference  to  black  and  white  work,  but  his  painting  vibrates 
with  it.  It  is  of  the  structure,  there  is  no  relapsing  into  a  convenient 
undertone  of  black  or  brown  any  more  than  in  nature.  How  a  gray 
sky  appeared  to  him  the  quotation  from  his  works  has  shown ;  but 
his  power  is  more  striking  in  the  richer  effects  to  which  he  tended 
more  and  more  until  they  culminated  in  his  stained  glass  —  prob- 
ably the  richest  color  creations  that  have  yet  been  fashioned.     There 


324  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

is  a  glory,  a  radiance  in  light  streaming  through  glass  that  cannot  be 
given  by  paint  on  canvas ;  but  even  on  canvas  in  combining  the 
purest,  strongest  colors  into  a  liarmony  that  lifts  the  spectator  for  an 
instant  out  of  himself  and  into  an  enchanted  world  no  man  of  his 
generation  has  equalled  him.  There  is  beneath  it  a  science  of  com- 
plementary colors,  of  light  vibrations  and  the  like,  which  has  been 
profoundly  studied  and  which  has  undoubtedly  aided  in  practice,  but 
which  has  no  more  made  the  painter  than  a  knowledge  about  sound 
waves  makes  the  musician.  Fine  color  in  the  end  comes  through 
feeling,  and  it  must  be  appreciated  in  the  same  way  and  not  by 
science,  though  La  Farge's  color  responds  remarkably  to  some  mate- 
rial tests.  Its  carrying  power,  for  instance,  is  surprising,  and  one  of 
the  little  Samoan  water-colors  will  sparkle  and  glow  like  a  sapphire 
or  opal  on  a  gallery  wall  eighty  feet  away,  making  the  other  pictures 
look  dull  and  lifeless. 

All  of  La  Farge's  earlier  work,  however,  and  the  easel  work  gen- 
erally, admirable  as  it  was,  still  left  for  the  most  part  a  somewhat 
disquieting  feeling.  It  was  not  that  it  was  defective  in  technical 
qualities,  though  at  times  the  mind  failed  perfectly  to  triumph 
over  the  recalcitrant  material ;  the  trouble  was  that  here  were  quali- 
ties of  the  very  highest — qualities  akin  to  those  of  the  great  masters, 
displayed  for  the  most  part  in  studies,  in  momentary  impressions. 
The  masters  produced  such  things,  but  they  were  a  by-product. 
Their  characteristic  achievements  were  ampler,  more  synthetic. 
Here  the  talent  seemed  to  be  scattered  over  too  wide  a  field  and 
nowhere  to  give  its  full  measure.  The  larger  opportunity  needed 
came  with  the  commission  for  mural  paintings,  which  began  with 
Trinity  Church  and  culminated  for  a  time  with  the  great  com- 
position in  the  chancel  of  the  Church  of  the  Ascension,  New 
York.  With  this  came  purely  decorative  work,  tinting  of  walls 
and  ceilings,  designing  of  borders  and  arabesques,  work  in  ivory  and 
mother-of-pearl,  and  rare  woods  or  metals,  grave  monuments  carved 
in  marl^lc  by  him  or  under  his  direction,  mosaics  in  all  materials, 
and  above  all  the  colored  glass.  In  all  this  varied  mass  of  produc- 
tion there  was  nothing  that  did  not  have  interest  and  charm,  noth- 
ing that  was  not  original  with  that  "strangeness  in  its  proportion" 
without  which  Lord  Bacon  tells  us  "  there  is  no  excellent  beauty." 


FIG.  70.  — LA  FARGE:    WATSON   MEMORIAL  WINDOW.  TRIXITV  CHURCH,  BUFFALO. 

[Copyright,  1898,  by  John  La  Large.] 


LA   FAROE   AND    WHISTLER 


327 


With  the  opalescent  glass  he  may  be  said  to  have  given  the  world  a 
new  and  splendid  art,  and  yet  there  were  those  who  regretted  the 
neglect  of  pure  painting  just  when  achievement  culminated  and  who 
welcomed  with  peculiar  enthusiasm  the  return  to  mural  composi- 
tions of  the  past  few  years.  This  last  work,  such  as  the  decorations 
for  Bowdoin  College  or  the  St.  Paul  Court  House,  are  the  ripest  and 
completest  productions  of  a  talent  which  shows  no  signs  of  declining. 

It  is  not  yet  time  to  estimate  critically  the  painting  of  John 
La  Farge.  It  is  too  varied  and  too  far  apart  from  the  ordinary  cate- 
gories. Something  of  its  quality  shows  in  the  mere  description  of 
his  life  and  production,  and  a  special  word  of  respect  is  due  to  the 
artistic  probity  of  that  life.  In  a  land  where  art  is  comprehended 
by  an  infinitesimal  minority,  and  where  it  gains  small  pecuniary 
reward  and  no  public  honors,  he  has  followed  his  ideal,  and  neither 
uncertain  health,  business  complications,  nor  the  expostulations  of 
patrons  have  made  him  waver  from  the  completest  expression  of 
which  he  was  capable.  His  influence  has  been  great,  not  so  much 
as  a  teacher  of  pupils,  but  as  a  master  with  assistants.  A  notable 
list  of  men  have  worked  under  him  at  various  times,  Saint  Gaudens 
(then  just  beginning  his  career),  Francis  Lathrop,  Will  H.  Low, 
J.  Humphrey  Johnston,  Wilton  Lockwood,  none  of  whom  repro- 
duces closely  his  style,  but  each  of  whom  shows  in  a  different  way 
the  effect  of  his  inspiration. 

La  Farge  is  surely  an  American  artist  by  every  conventional  test. 
He  was  born  here,  he  developed  here,  his  work  is  here ;  across  the 
Atlantic,  in  spite  of  some  displays  of  sketches  or  glass,  he  is  hardly 
more  than  the  shadow  of  a  great  name,  and  yet  there  is  something 
in  his  painting,  a  sanity,  a  clarity,  a  delicacy  of  perception,  that  pro- 
claims his  French  blood.  As  for  Whistler,  he  spent  his  boyhood 
(from  eight  to  fifteen)  abroad  and  at  twenty-one  went  to  Europe, 
never  again  to  return  to  his  native  land ;  but  though  he  for  years 
mingled  in  the  life  of  London  and  Paris,  ft  was  always  as  a  sort  of 
envoy  in  partibns  injidelium.  He  remained  an  American  to  the 
last,  and  while  his  Americanism  was  certainly  not  of  a  common  type, 
especially  in  its  developments,  yet  as  an  Englishman  or  a  French- 
man he  was  inconceivable.  If  another  race  can  justify  a  claim  to 
him,  it  is  through    his    Irish   grandfather.     The   imaginative,  com- 


328  HISTORY    OF    AMERICAN    PAINTING 

bative  Celtic  strain,  passionate,  warm-hearted,  illogical,  was  in  liim 
to  the  last,  making  his  manners  those  of  a  fascinating  but  thoroughly 
spoiled  child. 

Whistler  was  born  in  Lowell,  Massachusetts,  on  the  loth  of  July, 
1834.  The  place  and  date  are  set  down  at  length  because,  as  it 
suited  his  fancy,  he  made  contradictory  statements  about  both,  giv- 
ing to  Baltimore,  St.  Petersburg,  and  other  cities  the  honor.  He  was 
christened  James  Abbott,  which  he  subsequently  changed  to  James 
Abbott  McNeill  at  about  the  time  of  his  final  departure  for  Europe. 
The  Whistlers  w-ere,  many  of  them,  connected  with  the  army.  His 
grandfather,  of  an  English  family  long  settled  in  Ireland,  had  fought 
under  Burgoyne,  but  afterward  entered  the  American  service,  and 
his  father  was  a  major  and,  moreover,  a  distinguished  engineer.  It 
was  in  this  latter  capacity  that  he  was  called  to  Russia  in  1842,  and 
there  he  died  in  1849,  his  wife  and  children  returning  to  America. 

It  was  natural  that  the  boy  should  have  turned  to  the  army  as  his 
career,  and  he  was  appointed  to  the  Academy  at  West  Point  in  185  i, 
his  diminutive  stature  probably  being  overlooked  out  of  regard  to  the 
martial  record  of  his  family.  He  followed  the  course  for  three  years, 
without  much  distinction  as  a  student,  and  finally  was  discharged  for 
deficiency  in  chemistry  in  June,  1854.  As  one  of  his  contemporaries 
at  West  Point  recalls  the  incident:  "The  subject  given  him  to  dis- 
cuss in  chemistry  before  the  Academic  Board  was  'silica,'  which 
constitutes  eight  per  cent  of  the  solid  matter  of  our  earth.  Whistler, 
it  is  said,  in  perfect  innocence  of  the  subject,  but  with  his  character- 
istically charming  manner,  described  silica  as  an  'elastic  gas'  or  a 
'  saponifiable  fat.'  The  young  ladies  in  the  audience  smiled  approval, 
but  the  stern  Academic  Board  dispensed  with  Whistler's  further  valu- 
able services  at  the  Military  Academy.  He  found  employment  for  a 
time  in  the  United  States  Coast  Survey  at  Washington,  but  finding 
that  his  compensation  'hardly  })aid  for  his  gloves,'  he  went  to  Lon- 
don, and  years  afterward  made  a  reputation  as  a  painter." 

His  employment  in  the  Coast  Survey  lasted  three  months  and 
five  days.  He  had  stood  at  the  head  of  his  class  in  drawing  at 
West  Point  and  had  a  knack  at  scribbling  heads  and  figures,  but 
the  laborious  topographical  work  of  the  office  w^as  unpleasant  to  him 
and   he  absented   himself  with  such   regularity  that    he  was  finally 


LA  far(;k  and  whistler 


329 


dismissed  to  tlic  perfect  satisfaction  of  both  sides.  Immediately 
after  this  lie  seems  to  have  gone  abroad,  first  to  London  and  then  to 
Paris,  where  he  entered  the  studio  of  Gleyre  and  remained  two  years. 
That,  with  the  exception  of  what  instruction  he  got  from  Weir 
as  a  cadet  at  West  Point,  constitutes  all  his  school  training.  He 
continued  awhile  in  Paris  after  leaving  the  studio  and  then  moved 
to  London,  where  most  of  the  remainder  of  his  life  was  passed  with 
some  returns  to  Paris  and  some  travelling  about  the  Continent,  and 
even,  in  the  sixties,  a  voyage  to  Valparaiso  for  his  health  ;  l^ut 
though  he  often  planned  to  do  so,  he  never  revisited  his  native 
land.  There  is  no  clear  chronological  record  of  his  movements, 
nor,  what  is  much  more  important,  of  the  production  of  his  pictures. 
A  head  of  himself  in  a  broad-brimmed  hat  is  one  of  his  earliest 
paintings  and  must  be  about  contemporary  with  the  "  Normandy  " 
etchings  which  were  published  in  1858,  and  were  really  done 
almost  everywhere  except  in  Normandy.  "  At  the  Piano  "  is  given 
as  of  i860,  a  "  Coast  of  Brittany  "  is  dated  i86r,  and  the  next  year 
produced  the  "  Blue  Wave,"  the  "  Building  of  Westminster  Bridge," 
and  the  "  White  Girl."  These  were  followed  by  other  studies  of 
the  Thames,  by  compositions  of  small  figures  in  classical  costume 
inspired  by  Japanese  prints,  which  got  no  further  than  sketches 
but  whose  spirit  influences  the  "  Princesse  du  Pays  de  la  Por- 
celaine"  of  1864.  Then  comes  the  "Little  White  Girl"  and  the 
"  Music  Room."  Of  about  the  same  time  are  the  Thames  etchings, 
published  as  a  set  in  1871,  but  executed  earlier,  and  the  Japanese 
influence  culminates  in  the  "  Balcony"  and  in  some  landscapes. 

A  little  later  the  series  of  large  portraits  begins  with  the  "  Artist's 
Mother,"  sent  to  the  Royal  Academy  in  1872,  the  "Thomas  Car- 
lyle,"  and  the  "  Miss  Alexander."  These  continue  on  through  the 
"  Rosa  Corder,"  shown  at  the  opening  of  the  Grosvenor  Gallery 
in  1877,  the  "Yellow  Buskin,"  and  the  rest.  This  brings  us 
nearly  into  the  eighties,  and  from  there  on  it  becomes  increasingly 
diiificult  to  date  or  place  Whistler's  work.  His  effort  was  scattered 
more  in  a  multitude  of  small  things  which  he  kept  long  by  him, 
sometimes  wishing  to  bring  them  to  a  higher  perfection,  some- 
times simply  unwilling  to  turn  the  children  of  his  fancy  out  into 
an  unsympathetic  world.      He  sent  irregularly  to  the  great  annual 


330  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

exhibitions  or  showed  his  works  by  themselves  in  the  gallery 
of  some  dealer. 

From  now  on  the  subject,  in  the  prosaic  sense,  became  less  and 
less  important ;  he  had  always  called  his  pictures  "  Harmonies," 
"  Symphonies,"  "  Arrangements,"  and  the  like,  and  many  of  them  now 
were  little  else.  Among  the  earliest  in  this  new  manner  were  the 
"Nocturnes, —  Black  and  Gold,"  and  "The  Falling  Rocket,"  which 
was  exhibited  in  the  Grosvenor  Gallery  in  1877  with  the  "  Rosa 
Corder,"  and  which  aroused  the  wrath  of  Ruskin  and  gave  rise 
to  the  famous  libel  suit.  In  1880  came  the  first  series  of  Venice 
etchings,  in  1886  another  series  of  twenty-six  was  issued,  and  in  the 
same  year  he  became  president  of  the  Society  of  British  Artists,  a 
position  which  he  did  not  long  hold.  The  series  of  views  of  the  sea, 
of  the  Thames,  of  bits  of  old  buildings,  or  of  little  shops  in  dim  twi- 
light streets  is  innumerable.  He  employed  every  medium,  oil,  water- 
color,  etching,  lithography,  each  in  accord  with  its  special  fitness. 
There  were  no  large  works  except  a  few  full-length  portraits,  and 
these  as  a  rule  were  far  below  his  earlier  achievement,  thou2:h  sino^le 
heads,  like  the  "  Blacksmith  "  or  the  "  Little  Rose  of  Lyme  Regis  " 
showed  all  his  old  power.  Toward  the  end  of  his  life  he  became 
dissatisfied  with  England  and  tried  to  settle  in  Paris ;  but  finally 
returning  to  London,  died  there  in  1903  and  was  buried  in  Chis- 
wick  graveyard  beside  his  mother. 

At  his  death  Whistler's  position  among  the  leading  painters 
of  his  time  was  firmly  established.  He  was  not  a  member  of  the 
Royal  Academy,  —  a  dignity  which,  however  well  merited,  would 
yet  have  been  rather  incongruous,  —  but  all  the  other  honors  of 
medals,  decorations,  praise  in  print  and  from  the  mouths  of  adoring 
disciples  were  his,  and  among  his  admirers  were  wealthy  men  ready 
to  buy  his  pictures  at  his  own  prices.  It  was  not  always  so.  In  the 
beginning  he  failed  utterly  of  comprehension  by  the  public  and 
endured  much  hostile  criticism.  Almost  the  only  drop  of  gall 
in  all  of  Tuckerman's  great  agglomeration  of  sugar  and  butter 
is  his  paragraph  on  Whistler. 

"  A  son  of  Major  Whistler,  U.S.A.,  who  is  also  from  Baltimore, 
has  made  some  curious  experiments  in  color,  and  some  of  his 
sketches  are  singularly  effective.     A  critic  of  the   Paris  Exposition 


FIG.  71. -WHISTLER  :    THE   LITTLE   ROSE   OF   LYME   REGIS,  BOSTON   JsIUSEUM. 
[From  a  Copley  Print.     Copyright,  1S97,  by  Curtis  &  Cameron,  Publishers,  Boston.] 


LA    FAROE    AND    WHISTLER 


333 


of  1867  tluis  describes  and  estimates  Mr.  Whistler's  somewhat 
numerous  contributions  to  the  American  Department.  '  Mr. 
Whistler's  etchings  attract  a  good  deal  of  attention,  and  differ  from 
his  paintings  in  meriting  it.  They  display  a  free  hand  and  a  keen 
eye  for  effect.  Three  of  the  oil  pictures  are  blurred,  foggy,  and 
imperfect  marine  pieces.  The  fourth  is  called  the  "  White  Girl," 
and  represents  a  powerful  female  with  red  hair,  and  a  vacant  stare 
in  her  soulless  eyes.  She  is  standing  on  a  wolfskin  hearth-rug, 
for  what  reason  is  unrecorded.  The  picture  evidently  means  vastly 
more  than  it  expresses — albeit  expressing  too  much.  Notwithstand- 
ing an  obvious  want  of  purpose,  there  is  some  boldness  in  the 
handling  and  a  singularity  in  the  glare  of  the  colors  which  cannot 
fail  to  divert  the  eye,  and  to  weary  it'  " 

This  is  stupid  and  coarse  without  the  slightest  comprehension  of 
what  Whistler's  art  contained  or  what  it  lacked,  but  so  almost  with- 
out exception  was  all  early  criticism  of  him  in  England.  In  France 
it  was  different.  There  were  French  critics  who  praised  the  "White 
Girl  "  with  intelligence  and  enthusiasm,  not  only  at  this  exhibition, 
but  earlier  in  1863,  when  it  had  been  one  of  the  most  prominent 
canvases  of  the  famous  Sahvi  dcs  Refuses,  and  this  gives  in  a 
way  the  keynote  of  his  position  throughout  life.  He  belonged 
artistically  to  the  little  group  of  realists  who  succeeded  to  Courbet 
in  France,  —  men  like  Fantin-Latour,  Manet,  Degas,  and  Legros, — 
men  of  the  greatest  ability  who  threw  over  the  whole  mass  of  aca- 
demic tradition  and  set  themselves  to  interpret  the  visible  world  be- 
fore them,  each  as  his  own  personality  led  him.  They  received  abuse 
in  plenty,  some  of  it  as  stupid  as  anything  lavished  on  Whistler; 
but  some  of  it  intelligent  and  just,  and  from  the  beginning  they 
never  lacked  a  circle  that  understood  and  encouraged.  Even  those 
who  failed  to  comprehend  were  not  indifferent.  For  intelligent 
French  people,  art  was  a  serious  matter,  and  innovators  who  strove 
to  degrade  it  were  miscreants  and  outlaws  of  course;  but  still,  just 
on  account  of  their  "  bad  eminence,"  not  persons  to  trifle  with  or 
ignore. 

Out  of  this  little  group  of  artists  among  whom  he  had  perhaps 
the  most  immaterial,  subtle  perception,  it  suited  Whistler  to  go  and 
settle  in  mid- Victorian  England,  among  a  stolid  race  in  one  of  its 


334  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAIXTIXCx 

most  stolid  moods.  Legros  lived  with  him  at  first  and  he  wrote 
to  Fantin-Latour,  begging  him  to  join  them  ;  but  he  never  came, 
except  for  short  visits,  and  Wliistler  drifted  more  and  more  away 
from  his  earlier  friends,  and  his  work  and  character  were  more  and 
more  shaped  by  the  British  Philistia  about  him.  What  ferment 
there  was  in  the  inert  mass  came  from  the  leaven  of  Ruskin's  teach- 
ing, and  that  unfortunately  was  the  exact  opposite  of  Whistler's 
practice.  The  Pre-Raphaelites  built  up  their  pictures  out  of  pain- 
fully observed  bits  of  detail,  the  figure  subjects  first  conceived  in 
the  mind,  and  then  laboriously  wrought  out  with  all  the  explanatory 
or  symbolic  accessories  that  would  reenforce  the  idea,  the  artist 
ordinarily  being  more  anxious  to  convey  a  literary  than  a  pictorial 
emotion. 

In  this  atmosphere  Whistler  struggled  for  forty  years  and  more. 
Even  Ruskin,  who  had  the  passionate  moral  conviction  of  the  Hebrew 
prophets  (as  well  as  their  lack  of  humor),  and  who  expressed  himself 
with  an  eloquence  unmatched  in  his  time,  was  for  the  mass  a  sort  of 
jest,  and  as  for  "Jimmie"  Whistler,  with  his  diminutive  stature  and  his 
queer  clothes,  his  absolute  disregard  for  proprieties,  and  all  "  the  sort 
of  thing  that  makes  us  English  what  we  are,"  he  became  a  licensed 
buffoon.  When  these  two  joined  in  a  lawsuit,  really  cetait  a  se 
fordrc.  Ruskin  pleaded  ill  health  and  did  not  appear  in  person,  but 
"Jimmie"  descended  into  the  arena  and  fought  with  the  beasts  at 
Ephesus,  and  for  two  days  the  utter  obtuseness  of  the  whole  English 
nation  to  any  conception  of  art  was  displayed  to  their  own  enormous 
amusement. 

A  somewhat  similar  display  had  taken  place  nearly  a  century 
before  in  another  lawsuit  in  which  an  American  artist  resident  in 
London  was  one  of  the  parties,  but  the  temper  of  the  trial  was 
entirely  different.  W^est  was  president  of  the  Royal  Academy,  a 
favorite  of  the  King,  and  when,  called  as  a  witness  in  behalf  of  Copley, 
he  exi^Liined  that  there  really  could  be  a  difference  in  the  copies 
made  by  a  good  engraver  and  a  bad  one  from  tlie  same  picture,  the 
judge  treated  him  with  the  greatest  deference,  insisted  upon  calling 
him  Sir  Benjamin  (although  West  protested  against  the  title),  and 
finally,  after  hearing  his  evidence  declared  to  the  jury :  "  I  sup- 
pose, gentlemen,  you  are  perfectly  satisfied.     I  perceive  that  there  is 


I 


LA   FAROE   AND   WHISTLER  335 

much  more  in  this  than  I  had  any  idea  of,  and  I  am  sorry  that  I  did 
not  make  it  more  my  study  when  I  was  young."  But  the  jury  vin- 
dicated the  national  temperament,  and  promptly  brought  in  a  verdict 
against  the  painter. 

That  with  all  the  world  open  to  him  Whistler  should  have  per- 
sisted in  dwelling  in  this  uncongenial  land  may  seem  strange,  but 
there  were  personal  reasons  besides  the  fact  that  most  of  his  near 
relatives  were  in  England,  and  that  (what  is  not  generally  recog- 
nized) he  had  found  patrons  there  to  buy  his  w^ork  from  the  first, 
although  no  critic  gave  it  anything  except  ridicule.  Paris  would 
seem  to  have  been  his  natural  refuge,  but  it  is  doubtful  if  he  had 
any  deep  comprehension  of  or  liking  for  French  culture  and  man- 
ners. In  Paris  he  could  have  known  familiarly  no  such  large  circle 
of  distinguished  people  as  at  London,  and  above  all  he  w^ould  not 
have  been  so  prominent  himself. 

Many  excuses  have  been  made  for  his  egotism,  his  delight  in 
notoriety,  his  disregard  of  the  general  standards  of  behavior.  His 
friends  have  attributed  it  to  a  proud  consciousness  of  the  merit  of 
his  work,  or  to  his  passionate  devotion  to  art,  all  slights  to  wdiich 
roused  him  to  indignant  fury.  His  apologists  have  conjectured  that 
he  may  have  been  forced  to  it  by  the  need  of  notoriety  to  enable 
him  to  sell  his  pictures.  His  enemies  have  said  it  was  just  inor- 
dinate, inborn,  unrestrained  self-conceit,  and  the  mass  of  the  public 
are  generally  taking  that  view\  All  of  the  accounts  of  his  early 
life  agree  wdth  the  description  of  his  West  Point  experiences,  given 
some  pages  back,  in  showing  his  personal  idiosyncrasies  clearly 
marked  long  before  he  had  anything  to  do  with  art.  No  word 
seems  too  harsh  to  apply  to  him  after  reading  some  of  the  amaz- 
ing lives  and  reminiscences  and  tributes  with  which  his  alleged 
friends  have  recently  rushed  into  print,  but  the  impression  left  by 
these  is  certainly  false.  Those  who  have  come  under  his  personal 
charni  can  never  judge  him  harshly.  He  had  such  an  amazing 
fascination  and  a  brilliancy  so  entirely  his  own  that  his  claim  to 
be  treated  as  an  exceptional  person  seemed  justified. 

This  claim  was  strengthened  in  England  by  his  art,  which  stood 
absolutely  alone  both  for  reviling  and  adulation.  There  he  had 
no  rival,  which  is  possibly  the  main  reason  why  he  preferred  it  to 


336  HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

I"" ranee,  where  he  would  have  been  compelled  to  stand  alongside  of 
men  like  Corot  or  Degas,  whose  point  of  view  was  not  far  different 
from  his  own,  and  where  the  Ten  O' Clock  would  have  been  con- 
sidered as  a  clever  exposition  of  views  held  by  a  large  school.  This 
desire  for  prominence,  this  overestimation  of  his  own  importance, 
is  frequently  an  element  of  strength  in  an  artist.  If  some  form  of 
beauty  appeals  with  peculiar  force  to  a  man,  and  for  years  he  studies 
it  and  the  means  of  expressing  it,  he  is  not  to  blame,  when  he  suc- 
ceeds, if  he  delights  in  his  own  work  or  even  if,  not  possessing  an 
eclectic  taste,  he  misjudges  the  works  of  others.  Whistler's  faults, 
if  faults  there  were,  lay  in  overshooting  the  mark.  Carried  away 
by  the  joy  of  fighting  and  the  delight  in  stinging  epigram  (was  it 
the  Celtic  blood  }\  he  loses  sight  of  the  main  object.  He  was  for 
the  most  part  right  in  the  squabbles  reported  in  the  Gentle  Aj^t 
of  Making  Enemies,  but  all  of  its  shrill,  nervous  brilliancy  carries 
no  such  assured  conviction  of  the  right  of  the  artist  to  be  a  law 
unto  himself  as  the  courteous  note  with  which  John  La  Farge  inter- 
rupts the  current  of  his  Impressions  on  Art  to  inquire:  "Has 
it  ever  occurred  to  you  how  excusable  are  the  misapprehensions 
of  many  literary  critics  of  art }  "  and  then  goes  on  to  show  that 
those  unhappy  men  can  have  no  assured  basis  for  judgment 
and  consequently  are  obliged  to  promulgate  a  mass  of  negligible 
opinions. 

The  art  of  Whistler  manifestly  was  not  English  nor  yet  Ameri- 
can but  in  its  derivation  purely  French.  Gleyre,  with  whom  he  stud- 
ied, was  not  so  insignificant  as  most  of  the  biographers  make  out ;  the 
"  Illusions  Perdues,"  if  a  trifle  friorid,  has  sentiment  and  charm;  but  to 
have  mastered  either  Gleyre's  method  or  his  point  of  view  would  have 
taken  more  time  than  the  two  years  spent  in  his  atelier.  At  that  time, 
however,  instruction  was  not  confined  to  work  from  the  model,  but 
included  also  study  of  the  masterpieces  in  the  Louvre,  and  thither 
Whistler  went  often.  He  looked  and  lounged  more  than  he  worked, 
though  he  is  known  to  have  copied  Boucher's  "  Bath  of  Diana"  very 
badl\'  and  the  "  Angelica  "  of  Ingres,  as  well  as  the  "  Group  of  Cava- 
liers "  by  Velasquez.  It  was  the  Whistler  of  that  period  that  Du 
Maurier  knew  and  afterwards  sketched  as  Joe  Sibley  in  the  unexpur- 
gated  Trilby,  and  it  was  then  also  that  Whistler  made  the  acquaint- 


LA    FAROE   AND    WHISTLKR  337 

ance  of  Fantin-Latour,  who  was  a  diligent  student  of  the  old  masters 
and  who  became  for  a  while  his  most  intimate  friend. 

Fantin  has  never  been  properly  appreciated  in  America,  but  a 
study  of  his  early  portraits  of  his  family  or  his  friends,  with  their 
grave  harmonies  of  blacks  and  grays,  their  enveloping  atmosphere, 
and  their  quiet,  profound  feeling,  would  help  to  explain  the  forma- 
tion of  Whistler's  art.  It  was  not  to  him,  however,  but  to  Courbet, 
the  peculiar  detestation  of  Gleyre  (who  refused  to  send  again  to 
the  Salon  after  his  enemy's  pictures  had  been  received  there),  that 
Whistler  acknowledges  obligation.  They  met  in  Fantin-Latour's 
studio,  and  there  must  have  been  a  good  deal  of  personal  inter- 
course between  them,  for  they  were  both  at  Trouville  during  one 
or  two  summers,  and  of  the  Irish  girl,  Joe,  who  was  Whistler's 
favorite  model,  and  who  posed  for  the  "  White  Girl,"  Courbet 
painted  two  portraits. 

There  is  more  resemblance  between  the  two  men  than  might 
be  supposed.  Apart  from  their  colossal  egotism  which  was  in  both 
of  the  aggressive,  shameless  type,  neither  had  the  education  nor 
the  temperament  to  understand  the  classical  or  the  romantic  point 
of  view.  It  may  be  said  of  Whistler  as  of  Courbet,  "  Nothing  that 
he  read  or  heard  or  thought  left  a  pictorial  impression  on  his  brain." 
But  Courbet  was  the  founder  of  a  school  and  twenty-five  years 
older  than  Whistler.  When  the  latter  came  to  Paris,  in  1855, 
Courbet  was  at  the  height  of  his  power.  He  had  shown  eleven 
w^orks  in  the  exposition  of  that  year,  and  had  organized  outside  a 
special  exhibition  of  thirty-eight  more,  which  was  considered  at  that 
time  a  scandalously  unprofessional  act  and  gained  him  great  noto- 
riety. Such  a  shining  mark  would  naturally  appeal  to  Whistler 
and  awake  emulation,  but  none  of  the  followers  of  Courbet  equalled 
him  in  direct,  simple  vision  and  in  strong,  rich  handling — Whistler 
least  of  all.  What  might  have  happened  if  he  had  had  the  physique 
of  the  peasant  of  Ornans  is  open  to  conjecture ;  but  his  diminutive 
body  and  nervous  temperament  is  reflected  in  his  work,  as  also 
his  refinement  —  the  fact  that  he  was  an  aristocrat  and  throughout 
his  life  associated  with  the  people  of  intelligence  and  social  position. 
He  attempted  Courbet's  heavy  impasto  in  the  early  head  of  himself 
but  not  successfully,  and  made  tentative  essays  in  different  direc- 


338  HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

tions  before  he  began  to  find  his  proper  expression  in  "  At  the 
Piano."  Even  here  the  massing  of  each  color  as  a  spot  by  itself 
may  have  come  from  the  influence  of  Fantin-Latour,  and  the  brush 
work  of  Manet  appears  now  and  then  as  in  the  rug  of  the  "  White 
Girl,"  or  much  later  in  the  hat  in  "  Rosa  Corder,"  which  might 
have  been  picked  out  of  the  heap  of  garments  in  the  "  Dejeuner 
sur  I'Herbe."  The  "Coast  of  Brittany"  and  the  "Blue  Wave," 
strong  in  color  with  brown  shadows,  have  an  echo  of  Courbet  and 
are  thoroughly  uncharacteristic,  but  with  the  "White  Girl,"  exhibited 
in  the  same  year  as  the  latter,  he  comes  into  his  own  realm.  It 
must  have  been  painted  before  he  was  twenty-eight  and  is  not  only 
a  beautiful  work  in  itself,  but  contains  all  his  characteristic  qualities: 
the  luminosity,  the  delicate  differentiation  of  almost  similar  tones, 
the  melting  together  of  the  figure  and  background,  the  feeling  for 
pure,  sweet  color,  the  composition  by  spots  and  spaces,  the  strange 
pathetic  charm  of  the  face. 

The  portrait  of  his  mother,  the  "Thomas  Carl3de,"  the  "Miss 
Alexander,"  are  usually  considered  the  height  of  his  achievement, 
and  they  with  works  of  their  class  are  likely  to  be  the  corner- 
stones of  his  future  fame;  but  their  very  strength,  their  completeness, 
their  comprehensibility,  render  them  less  characteristic  than  the 
"  Little  White  Girl,"  for  instance,  which  is  all  his  own,  with  a  com- 
position apparently  accidental  but  in  reality  very  perfect,  and  an  exe- 
cution so  personal,  so  complete,  so  flawless,  that  it  vies  with  the  blue 
and  white  porcelain  and  the  azaleas  represented  in  it.  Of  equal  work- 
manship is  the  "Music  Room"  of  the  same  date,  but  that  stands  quite 
by  itself.  It  seems  like  an  effort  to  show  some  of  his  Pre-Raphael- 
ite contemporaries  how  to  do  artistically,  what  they,  with  much 
labor  and  many  protestations  of  high  principles,  were  doing  other- 
wise. The  subject  was  the  same  as  many  of  theirs,  an  English 
interior  of  the  sixties.  The  whiteness  of  the  room  and  the  black- 
ness of  the  lady's  riding  habit  are  given  with  no  attempt  to  mitigate 
the  contrast,  the  red  and  green  pattern  of  the  chintz  hangings 
is  unsoftened,  but  the  canvas  sparkles  with  color  that  has  no  touch 
of  crudeness. 

He  never  worked  again  in  the  same  way.  Perhaps  the  effort 
was    too    irksome.     Certainly  as    he    advanced    he    cared    less    and 


LA    FAROE   AND    WHISTLER  339 

less  for  the  definite  realities;  it  was  the  spirit  of  things  which  he 
wished  to  give,  but  expressed  beautifully.  He  himself  declared 
that  he  had  no  desire  to  reproduce  external  nature  at  all,  but  only 
beautiful  combinations  of  pattern  and  tone  which  would  logically 
land  hini  in  combinations,  like  the  spotting  of  tortoise-shell  or  the 
glazes  of  Chinese  potters.  He  must  not  be  taken  too  literally,  how- 
ever. The  message  was  probably  made  overstrong  that  it  might 
penetrate  somewhat  into  unresponsive  minds.  In  reality  he  never 
forgot  his  subject,  whether  it  was  his  mother,  or  Battersea  Bridge 
at  twilight,  or  a  huckster's  barrow  in  Whitechapel,  the  spirit  of  the 
person,  the  place,  or  the  hour  as  he  felt  it  is  most  exquisitely  and 
accurately  rendered,  even  if  the  exact  joints  of  the  timbers  of  the 
bridge  or  the  price  cards  on  the  apples  are  not  entirely  compre- 
hensible. 

Some  of  the  work  (the  pastels,  water-colors,  lithographs,  and  the 
like)  is  slight  in  execution,  nearly  all  is  delicate.  It  demands  that  it 
be  treated  with  particular  regard,  and  looked  at  only  under  special 
conditions,  something  like  those  that  the  Japanese  connoisseurs 
have  formulated  for  enjoying  works  of  art.  It  must  be  hung  in 
harmonious  surroundings,  in  its  own  special  light,  and  be  viewed 
with  a  receptive  and  tranquil  mind.  These  conditions  are  not  so 
easily  fulfilled  in  these  days  of  strenuous  life ;  but  if  a  man  will 
make  the  effort,  he  will  have  his  reward.  There  is  in  Whistler's 
work  a  sentiment  of  beauty  most  delicate,  subtle,  rare,  almost 
impalpable  and  like  that  of  no  other  man.  He  has  been  much  com- 
pared to  Velasquez,  but  the  comparison  (apart  from  all  questions 
of  proportion)  is  not  felicitous.  There  is  in  both  accuracy  in  values, 
a  sense  of  atmospheric  depth,  a  preference  for  grave  harmonies  in 
white  or  black  or  brown,  rather  than  in  gaudier  tints ;  but  the 
Spanish  master  stands  alongside  of  Rubens  as  an  illustration  of  the 
strength  and  sanity  of  genius,  with  even  a  loftier  dignity  and  a 
craftsmanship  if  not  greater  at  least  more  restrained  and  sure.  No 
mists  of  sentiment  dim  Velasquez's  eyes,  for  him  no  factory  chimneys 
turn  to  campanili.  It  is  truth,  not  painting  that  he  seeks,  and  there 
is  nothing  in  all  Whistler's  work,  not  even  the  portrait  of  his  mother, 
that  would  not  show  faded  and  nerveless  beside  the  weakest  of  his 
canvases. 


340  HlSrORV    OF   AMERICAN    PALXTING 

If  a  comparison  must  be  made  with  one  of  the  great  dead,  it  would 
be  far  more  suitable  to  choose  Giorgione  —  provided  that  the  critics 
will  grant  him  the  authorship  of  the  works  that  are  called  Giorgio- 
nesque.  There  will  be  found  the  same  tranquil  figures  gazing  out 
of  the  canvas,  with  quiet,  shadowy  eyes,  the  same  enveloping  air,  the 
same  love  for  polished  surfaces  reflecting  the  light  or  for  tranquil 
water,  the  same  turning  of  commonplace  into  poetry  and  mystery,  the 
same  sensitive,  loving  perfection  of  tcchniqite.  The  spirit  is  the 
same,  even  though  one  produced  harmonies  in  brown  and  the  other 
symphonies  in  white;  but  while  the  spirit  is  similar,  the  achievement 
is  far  different.  For  all  his  delicacy,  Giorgione  is  strong.  His  work 
is  rich  and  full,  and  while  few  may  fathom  its  depths,  all  may  find 
delight  in  its  glowing  color  and  beautiful  forms.  Whistler's  is  elu- 
sive, not  readily  yielding  its  secret.  The  endurance  of  his  fame 
depends  on  whether  posterity,  which  is  apt  to  be  indolent,  will  think 
the  return  worth  the  effort  which  it  demands;  but  this  is  of  small 
importance  to  us.  He  liad  his  message  for  those  of  his  own  time 
and  in  the  end  it  was  accepted. 


CHAPTER    XVIII 

FIGURE    PAINTERS    OF   THE    SIXTIES    AND    SEVENTIES 

Eastman  Johnson. —  T.  W.  Wood.  —  Guy.  —  J.  G.  Brown.  —  Boughton.  —  John  F. 
Weir.  —  E.  L.  Henry.  —  Wordsworth  Thompson. ^ Winslow  Homer.  —  His 
Originality.  —  His  Subjects.  —  Character  of  his  Work.  —  His  Water-Colors. 

The  consideration  of  French  influence  on  one  or  two  excep- 
tional men  led  naturally  to  the  art  of  Whistler,  which  was  its  final 
culmination,  —  an  abstract,  subtle  refinement  in  painting,  despising 
the  commonplace,  and  appealing  to  a  select  and  limited  public. 
Between  it  and  the  work  produced  by  most  of  his  fellow-craftsmen 
in  America  during  the  sixties  and  seventies  there  is  no  bond  of  sym- 
pathy possible.  They  were  the  companions  of  the  old  landscape 
school,  and  to  them  Hunt  and  La  Farge  stand  in  much  the  same  re- 
lation as  Inness  and  Martin  to  the  landscapists.  They  did  not  lack 
foreign  training.  Like  Kensett,  Whittredge,  and  the  rest  they  had 
made  their  studies  abroad,  but  like  them  they  appealed  to  the  popu- 
lar taste  which  in  America,  as  elsewhere,  demanded  anecdotic  sub- 
jects and  reproductions  of  real  life.  This  does  not  of  necessity 
imply  inferior  work,  and  in  fact  some  of  the  men  under  consideration 
were  admirable  painters,  displaying  in  their  simple  themes  the  best 
qualities  of  their  art. 

This  is  perfectly  illustrated  in  Eastman  Johnson,  who,  born  in 
1824,  is  one  of  the  earliest  of  the  group  as  he  is  one  of  the 
most  important.  He  turned  to  art  early  and  almost  before  he 
was  of  age  began  painting  portraits  in  Washington  and  Cam- 
bridge, but  finally  went  abroad  in  1849,  sharing  the  studio  of 
Leutze  at  Diisseldorf,  travelling  in  France  and  Italy,  and  afterward 
settling  at  The  Hague,  where  he  worked  five  years  with  such  success 
that  he  was  offered  the  position  of  court  painter  if  he  would  remain. 
He  returned  to  America,  however,  and  finally  settled  in  New  York 
in  i860. 

341 


342 


HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 


Eastman  Johnson's  teclmical  training  is  both  sound  and  com- 
plete. It  shows  in  the  slightest  of  his  sketches.  He  knows 
how  to  draw  and  he  knows  how  to  paint,  but  he  escaped  the  deadly 
monotony  of  the  Diisseldorf  training;  there  is  no  trace  of  his  asso- 
ciation with  Leutze  in  his  w'ork.  His  first  success  was  made  as  a 
portrait  painter,  and    he  has  always  remained  one.     His  heads,  of 


liG.  72.  —  Johnson:   Old  Kentucky  Home,  Le.wjx  Liukakv. 

men  especially,  are  fine  in  characterization  and  have  both  dignity  and 
distinction.  The  execution  is  luminous  and  rich  in  color,  with  a 
firm  certainty  of  drawing  and  construction  rare  at  the  time ;  but  his 
greatest  interest  is  as  a  painter  o{  o-cjirc.  He  took  up,  not  the  tradi- 
tions of  Mount,  for  there  w'ere  none,  but  something  of  his  subjects 
of  rural  life,  and  rendered  them  with  a  greater  knowledge  and  more 
artistic  qualities,  and  yet  kept  the  sincerity  and  naturalness  of  the 
older  man.  As  early  as  1867  he  painted  the  "  Old  Kentucky  Home," 
a  charming  picture,  which  makes  its  apology  for  the  easy,  kindly  side 
of  slavery  more  potently  than  a  dozen  volumes.     This  was  followed 


FIGURE   PAINTERS   OF   THE   SIXTIES   AND    SEVENTIES         343 

by  other  subjects  less  "  literary,"  more  direct,  and  taken  usually  from 
the  country  life  of  the  Northern  states — the  "  Husking  Bee,"  the 
"  Cranberry  Pickers,"  children  playing  in  a  barn  or  around  an  old 
stagecoach,  the  quaint  characters  of  the  village  or  the  farm.  In  all 
is  the  same  wholesomeness  and  delight  in  the  simple,  universal 
things,  —  the  sunlight,  fresh  air,  the  play  of  children,  or  the  mellow 
humor  of  age.  Moreover  the  subjects  were  far  better  painted  than 
ever  before  in  America  and  with  a  varying  handling.  Many  of  the 
smaller  canvases  have  a  finish  that  suggests  the  contemporary 
French  work  of  Edouard  Frere,  but  in  the  larger  paintings  the 
brush  work  is  freer  and  looser,  becoming  in  the  lights  of  portraits  a 
sort  of  granular  impasto,  while  the  shadows  are  a  warm  transparent 
brown.  The  brown  shadows  persist  also  in  the  out-of-door  scenes  ; 
but  in  spite  of  that  they  have  the  true  sparkle  of  the  bright  New 
England  autumn  while  the  Nantucket  interiors  with  their  white- 
washed walls,  and  the  old  squire  and  his  cronies  in  black  have  some- 
thing of  the  quiet  charm  of  the  little  Dutch  masters. 

Genre  pictures  similar  to  these  were  painted  by  T.  W.  Wood, 
who  in  his  early  days  was  a  pupil  of  Chester  Harding,  and  who  after 
a  couple  of  years'  study  in  Paris  returned  to  America  to  paint  por- 
traits in  Kentucky  and  Tennessee  until  1S67,  when  he  settled  in 
New  York  and  has  since,  like  Johnson,  painted  both  figure  pieces 
and  portraits  in  somewhat  the  same  manner. 

A  distinctly  different  style  of  painting  was  brought  to  the  coun- 
try by  Seymour  Joseph  Guy,  who  was  born  in  England  the  same 
year  as  Eastman  Johnson,  and  who  got  all  his  training  there,  not 
coming  to  America  until  he  was  over  thirty.  His  painting  was  of 
the  smooth,  enamel-like  type,  which  Ingham  had  also  practised,  its 
minute  finish  approaching  that  of  Diisseldorf,  but  with  a  brighter, 
purer  coloring  and  a  less  monotonous  draftsmanship.  He  has  painted 
portraits,  landscapes,  and  ideal  heads,  but  especially  subjects  with 
children  —  something  like  those  of  Meyer  von  Bremen,  but  with  a 
greater  variety  in  the  compositions  and  in  the  faces.    . 

But  if  Guy  has  a  claim  as  a  painter  of  childhood,  his  compatriot, 
J.  G.  Brown,  who,  seven  years  younger  than  Guy,  came  to  America  a 
couple  of  years  later,  has  made  boyhood  his  own  special  province.  He 
painted  a  few  portraits  both  in  England  and  America;  but  he  soon 


344 


HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    TAINTING 


began  the  series  of  his  newsboys,  bootblacks,  and  street  urchins  gen- 
erally, which  instantly  suited  the  popular  taste.  Since  then  his  repu- 
tation has  been  inextricably  connected  with  such  subjects.  They 
touched  the  humor  or  the  sentiment  of  the  great  public,  which  felt 
itself  defrauded  if  they  failed  to  get  just  what  they  had  got  before. 
The  artist  has  tried  other  subjects  and  painted  them  rather  better  than 
his  newsboys,  one  an  important  composition  of  laborers  taking  their 


Fig.  73.  —  GuY:    Makinc.  a  Tkain,  Ownkd  hv  Mrs.  George  W.  Elkins,  Philadelphia. 

noonday  rest  along  the  docks,  with  the  different  nationalities  and 
characters  well  observed  and  discriminated,  and  latterly  types  of 
country  life;  but  they  are  received  distrustfully  by  his  old  admirers. 
For  them  he  is  the  painter  of  newsboys,  and  any  desertion  to  other 
models  savors  of  disloyalty.  His  workmanship  has  the  minute  and 
careful  finish  resultino:  from  the  Enorlish  traininii',  which  shows  also 
in  Ingham  and  Guy,  though  he  lacks  their  pureness  of  color  and 
transjDarent  enamel-like  surface;  but  from  the  torn  cap  to  the  copper- 
toed  shoes  every  detail  is  given  with  untiring  thoroughness;  the 
well-scrubbed  faces  shine,  and  the  eyes  gleam  with  well-placed  high 


FIGURE    PAINTERS   OF   THE   SIXTIES   AND   SEVENTIES         345 

lights.  These  details  may  not  delight  all,  but  they  have  a  large  and 
faithful  circle  of  followers. 

There  is  still  a  third  English  artist  to  be  noted,  but  the  early  life 
of  George  H.  Boughton  was  English  only  by  the  accident  of  birth. 
He  came  to  America  when  three  years  old  and  all  of  his  train- 
ing was  received  under  distinctly  American  auspices.  Not  that 
he  profited  much  from  any  systematic  teaching.  He  began  drawing 
and  painting  when  a  boy  in  Albany,  without  much  help  from  anyone, 
but  succeeded  in  selling  his  early  productions  to  the  Art  Union  on 
such  favorable  terms  that  when  he  was  seventeen  he  was  able  to 
make  a  six  months'  sketching  trip  in  England.  His  success  con- 
tinued after  his  return.  He  left  Albany  for  New  York  and  a  year  or 
so  later,  in  i860,  went  to  Paris.  There  he  entered  no  atelier,  but  got 
what  counsel  he  could  from  different  French  artists,  especially  from 
Edouard  Frere  of  whose  kindly  helpfulness  he  kept  a  grateful 
memory.  He  worked  in  Normandy  and  Brittany  and  in  1861  went 
to  London,  took  a  studio,  and  remained  there  until  his  death.  Born 
in  England  and  returning  there  so  young,  Boughton  may  fairly  be 
claimed  as  a  British  artist,  and  yet  he  belongs  to  America  rather 
more  than  the  exact  chronology  indicates.  Long  after  his  final 
departure  he  continued  to  send  his  pictures  to  American  exhibitions 
and  to  find  many  of  his  patrons  here;  and  even  his  art  itself  was,  as 
to  its  spirit,  largely  formed  before  he  went  abroad,  and  his  subjects, 
with  the  exception  of  his  studies  of  French  peasants,  were  usually 
taken  from  the  life  of  the  early  colonists.  Even  his  Holland  pictures, 
when  they  came,  seemed  to  be  a  reversion  to  the  old  Dutch  traditions 
of  Albany  and  Knickerbocker  New  York.  It  is  a  pity  that  a  still 
stronger  plea  for  his  Americanism  cannot  be  made,  for  Boughton's 
art  is  of  a  sort  so  sweet  and  wholesome  that  one  would  willingly 
annex  it  if  one  could.  It  is  true  that  his  maidens,  whether  Puritan, 
English,  or  Dutch,  have  a  more  than  family  resemblance,  slender, 
blond,  with  dreamy  eyes  and  dewy  lips ;  but  their  charm  is  unfailing, 
and  the  coloring,  pale,  soft,  and  sweet  like  them,  is  delicately  varied, 
but  always,  even  in  pure  landscape,  showing  the  same  feeling  and 
individuality. 

Another  figure  painter,  a  few  years  later  in  date,  is  John  F.  Weir, 
son  of  Robert  W.  Weir  already  mentioned  as  the  painter  of  one  of 


346  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

the  compositions  in  the  Rotunda  of  the  Capitol  and  also  long  the  in- 
structor in  drawing  at  West  Point.  It  was  from  his  father  that  John 
¥.  Weir  received  his  first  instruction,  and  its  efficacy  is  proved  by  the 
sound  workmanship  of  his  early  pictures.  There  were  some  imagi- 
native subjects  like  the  "Christmas  Bell"  and  the  "Culprit  Fay," 
pleasant  and  fanciful ;  but  far  more  important  were  the  purely  real- 
istic scenes.  The  "  Gun  Foundry,"  studied  at  Cold  Spring,  opposite 
West  Point,  was  finished  in  1867  (the  same  year  as  Johnson's  "  Old 
Kentucky  Home  "),  and  the  "  Forging  the  Shaft "  the  year  following. 
They  are  remarkable  achievements  to  have  been  done  at  that  time 
by  a  young  man  who  had  had  no  foreign  study.  Not  only  are  they 
well  drawn  and  well  composed,  with  a  clearly  conveyed  sentiment  of 
the  enormous  power  of  machinery  as  compared  with  human  strength, 
but  the  varying  relations  of  daylight  and  the  glowing  metal  are  felt 
and  rendered  in  a  way  that  is  novel  and  in  advance  of  the  time. 
Soon  after  this  W^eir  made  a  short  trip  abroad  and  on  his  return 
became  director  of  the  newly  founded  Yale  School  of  Fine  Arts,  a 
position  which  he  has  retained  ever  since.  His  duties  as  director 
and  professor  have  undoubtedly  diminished  his  artistic  production, 
but  he  has  never  ceased  to  work  and  to  develop,  and  his  later  land- 
scapes, cool,  green,  and  fresh,  would  look  strange  beside  some  of  his 
earlier  efforts  inspired  by  the  Hudson  River  school.  Deserting  the 
smaller  figure  subjects,  he  seems  to  have  turned  at  present  to  these 
landscapes  and  to  some  admirable  portraits  as  his  main  w^ork,  al- 
though he  has  also  attempted  sculpture  with  success. 

Born  in  the  same  year  as  Weir  was  E.  L.  Henry,  and  a  compari- 
son of  the  work  of  the  two  men  shows  how  deceptive  internal 
evidence  as  to  schools  and  influence  is  apt  to  be.  Weirs  training, 
although  he  has  visited  Europe  several  times,  was  exclusively  Ameri- 
can, yet  his  techniqne  seems  clearly  the  result  of  foreign  teaching. 
Henry,  on  the  contrary,  when  he  was  nineteen,  was  a  pupil  of  Gleyre 
and  he  has  been  often  abroad  since,  but  his  work  has  a  peculiar,  dis- 
tinctive, native  quality,  and  this  not  alone  from  the  subjects.  They 
add  no  doubt  to  the  effect.  No  one  else  knows  as  well  as  he  the 
manners  and  customs  of  an  age  which  has  become  old-fashioned,  but 
hardly  as  yet  historic ;  the  first  half  of  the  last  century,  when  travel 
was  by  stagecoach  or  packet-boats  on  the  canal,  when  railroads  were 


YiG.    74. —  BROWN:    SYMPATHY. 


FIGURE    PAliNTERS   OF   THE    SIXTIES   AND    S1:V1:MIES 


349 


strange  innovations  of  doubtful  merit,  when  women  wore  hoops 
and  carried  reticules  and  bandboxes  and  the  men  were  stately  in 
swallow-tailed  coats  and  hats  of  real  beaver  fur.  He  knows  besides 
the  country  of  the  time,  the  construction  of  the  houses,  the  corduroy 
roads,  and  the  bridges.  Apart  from  all  this  local  interest  of  his  sub- 
jects, however,  he  paints  them  as  they  might  be  painted  in  England 
but  hardly  on  the  Continent,  minutely,  with  all  the  funny,  quaint 
details  given  so  that  the  eve  wanders  amused  among  them  ;  but  in 


b'lr,.     75.  —  BOUGHTON  :     TlLGRIMS    GOING    TO    ChURCH,    LENUX    LlHRARY. 

some  cases  this  very  multiplicity  of  interest  weakens  the  carrying 
effect  of  the  picture  at  a  distance. 

Wordsworth  Thompson,  who  was  a  fellow-pupil  with  Henry 
under  Gleyre,  paints  the  same  epoch,  or  the  revolutionary  one  just 
preceding,  if  without  so  intimate  and  curious  a  knowledge  yet  more 
broadly  and  with  a  smoothness  and  skill  of  handling  recalling  that 
if  he  worked  under  Gleyre,  he  was  also  a  pupil  of  Pasini. 

Besides  these  men  were  many  others  whose  names  appear  regu- 
larly in  the  Academy  catalogues  :  Henry  A.  Loop,  who  was  a  student 
of  Couture  ;  and  animal  painters  like  William  Hays,  who  painted  dogs 
and  deer,  but  especially  some  western  landscapes  which  with  their 
great  herds  of  buffalo  have  now  a  historic  interest.  There  were  also 
J.  F'.  Tait  with  his  shining  trout  or  his  well-groomed  deer,  and 
W.   H,    Beard,   whose    groups   of  bears  or  monkeys    imitating  the 


OD 


O  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 


weaknesses  or  vices  of  mankind  delighted  a  large  and  uncritical 
public.  From  all  the  other  figure  painters,  however,  one  man  stands 
out  quite  by  himself.  American  landscape,  in  spite  of  its  native 
origin  and  spirit,  reached  its  highest  point  by  assimilating  and 
adapting  something  of  foreign  methods.  No  one  of  the  men  with 
whom  the  school  culminates  worked  out  for  himself  a  point  of  view 
and  a  method  of  expression  in  indifference  to  foreign  models  any 
more  than  did  figure  painters  like  La  Farge  or  Eastman  Johnson; 
but  such  independence  may  fairly  be  asserted  of  Winslow  Homer. 
Of  itself  there  is  no  particular  merit  in  it.  A  painter  takes  his  inspi- 
ration and  his  methods  where  he  finds  them,  and  he  stands  or  falls 
by  his  work ;  but  originality  has  an  interest  of  its  own.  It  does  not 
necessarily  involve  strangeness  nor  queerness.  There  seems  nothing 
strikingly  novel  about  Homer's  subjects  or  methods;  both  are  on  the 
contrary  perfectly  simple  and  straightforward,  and  yet  there  is  no 
man  or  school  that  can  be  said  specifically  to  have  influenced  him. 

Homer  was  born  in  Boston  in  1836,  but  when  he  was  six  the  family 
moved  to  Cambridge,  then  so  small  a  town  that  he  had  the  life  of 
a  country  boy,  and  got  a  delight  in  the  open  air  that  never  left 
him.  He  drew  as  a  small  child,  and  his  skill  developed  so  that 
when  at  nineteen  he  went  into  a  lithographer's  office  he  could 
undertake  the  more  artistic  part  of  the  work,  making  titles  for  sheet 
music  and  a  series  of  portraits  of  the  Massachusetts  Senate.  After 
a  couple  of  years  he  set  up  for  himself  and  made  drawings  for 
Balloiis  Monthly  and  for  Harper  Brothers  —  the  latter  offering  to 
employ  him  on  a  regular  salary,  but  this  was  declined.  In  1S59  he 
first  came  to  New  York  and  two  years  later  took  a  studio  in  the 
old  University  building.  He  studied  in  the  night  class  of  the 
Academy  of  Design,  and  also  took  a  few  lessons  in  painting  from 
Rodel,  who  taught  him  how  to  set  a  palette  and  use  his  brushes. 
With  the  breaking  out  of  the  war  he  went  to  the  front  as  special 
correspondent  and  artist  for  the  Harpers,  and  later  made  a  second 
and  independent  trip  to  the  Army  of  the  Potomac. 

It  is  at  this  time  that  his  paiiitings  begin  'with  a  scries  of  army 
scenes,  including  tli^*  '*«^isoiTe%M"roiii  tlte^  F^'ont"  of  1865.  Then 
came  studies  of  negro  life  and  character,  followed  by  subjects  taken 
from  the  life  of  the  countrv  and  the  little  villas^es.     Later  he  went 


FIGURE   PAINTERS   OF   THE   SIXTIES   AND   SEVENTIES 


351 


into  the  Adirondacks  and  found  there  congenial  matter  in  the  rugged 
landscape  and  the  equally  sincere  and  unpolished  guides,  but  more 
and  more  he  gravitated  toward  the  sea.  He  was  at  Gloucester  in 
1 88 1.  The  next  year  he  made  a  trip  to  England,  where  he  had 
already  been  for  a  short  visit  in  1867,  and  he  went  several  times 
to  Bermuda.      Most  of  all.  however,  he  has  been  drawn  of  late  years 


Fig.  76. — -John  F.  Weir:   Forging  the  Shaft,  Metropolitan  Museum. 

to  the  austere  and  rugged  grandeur  of  the  Maine  coast,  of  which  he 
has  become  the  recognized  interpreter. 

This  sequence  of  subjects  is  roughly  given  and  should  not  be 
regarded  as  exhaustive  nor,  still  less,  as  having  been  followed 
consecutively.  The  "  Visit  from  the  Old  Mistress,"  one  of  the  best 
of  the  pictures  of  negro  life,  was  painted  as  late  as  1880;  "  Snap-the- 
Whip,"  with  its  line  of  schoolboys  racing  down  a  grassy  hill,  is  of 
1876,  and  it  would  be  difficult  to  say  when  the  sea  first  appears,  but 
certainly  very  early.  The  mere  naming  of  the  subjects  shows  the 
feeling  for  the  open  air,  the  strong,  simple  types  of  soldier,  farmer, 
and  seaman  that  have  persisted  through  all  the  ages ;  but  the  sub- 
jects  themselves  do   not   tell  the  whole   story.      Eastman   Johnson 


JO^ 


HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAIX  I'lXG 


painted  almost  the  same  themes,  but  in  a  way  more  trained,  less  bare 
and  elemental.  Homer's  experience  as  an  illustrator  perhaps  aided 
the  clearness  and  directness  of  his  vision.  The  sketches  of  "  Our 
Special  Artist  at  the  Front,"  in  1861,  liad  to  be  indestructibly  clear 
to  withstand  the  clumsy  way  in  which  they  were  transferred  to  the 
wood  block.  Whether  from  this  cause  or  another,  when  he  began 
to   paint,  his  pictures  were  from  the   first  firmly  constructed,  well 


■'^■ 


m^ 


u^gm-^^-'ismA. 


Fig.  77.  —  IIenky:    (J.\  the  Way  IIomk. 

drawn,  and  with  an  amazing  power  of  striking  the  mind.  They  were 
manifestly  true.  The  conviction  of  their  veracity,  of  their  absolute 
reproduction  of  a  thing  seen,  is  overwhelming  ;  and  yet  they  never 
reproduce  a  subject  as  the  spectator  would  have  imagined  it.  John- 
son's "  Old  Kentucky  Home  "  has  but  to  be  seen  to  be  appreciated. 
That  is  what  every  one  imagined  an  old  Kentucky  home  ought  to  be; 
but  when  Homer's  Old  Mistress,  stately  in  black  silk,  visits  her 
former  slaves  who  sit  embarrassed  but  grateful,  or  when  a  negress 
with  the  sad  seriousness  of  our  simian  relatives  in  her  face  sews 
scraps  of  red  and  yellow  flannel  on  the  ragged  coat  of  her  equally 
serious  spouse  that  he  may  shine  in  the  carnival,  we  recognize  that 
thus  and  not  otherwise  the  reality  must  have  been.  Hut  we  would 
not  have    thouirht    of    it    that    way    unless    we    had    seen    it.      The 


FIGURE    PAINTERS   OF   THE    SIXTIES   AND   SEVENTIES         353 

perfectly-honest  would  probably  admit  that  even  if  they  had  seen  it 
they  would  not  have  painted  it  just  that  way.  They  would  have 
arranged  the  scene  a  trifle  more,  they  would  have  accented  the 
humor  or  the  pathos  or  the  beauty,  and  by  just  so  much  they 
would   ha\e  lessened  the  carrying  power. 

It  was  probably  this  lack  of  arrangement,  of  prettiness  in  his 
pictures,  that  made  Mrs.  Van  Rensselaer  detest  them  when  a  small 
child,  as  she  confesses  in  an  article  on  Homer;  but  even  a  small 
child's  dislike  could  not  prevent  their  making  an  indelible  im- 
pression on  her  mind.  They  are  remembered  when  most  of 
their  companions  in  the  old  Academy  exhibitions  are  forgotten, 
even  the  little  things,  the  interior  of  a  country  schoolhouse  with 
one  small  boy  kept  in,  a  couple  of  children  turning  to  look  at  a  dead 
fish  on  the  beach,  or  even  two  or  three  pencil  drawings,  made  on 
gray  paper  and  touched  in  with  white,  of  a  half-grown,  long-legged 
grirl  with  a  crook  and  knots  of  ribbons  on  her  ill-fittinor  dress, 
standing  out  in  the  sunlight  among  the  mullein  stalks,  a  New 
England  conception  of  a  Boucher  shepherdess.  Any  one  else 
would  have  rendered  her  with  some  recollection  of  the  grace  of 
the  prototype  if  only  by  way  of  caricature ;  but  Homer  in  a  few 
firm  strokes  draws  her  exactly  as  she  was,  with  no  more  sugges- 
tion of  the  court  of  Louis  XV  than  if  she  had  been  a  lumberman, 
and  yet  the  child  with  the  funny  attempt  at  finery,  finishes  by  being 
more  charming  than  any  attempt  to  resuscitate  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury. 

This  ignorance  of  or  indifference  to  what  other  men  have  done 
before  leads  Homer  to  attempt  things  which  have  been  generally 
accepted  as  impossible  of  representation,  as  when  he  drawls  out 
against  the  dark  background  the  scarlet  threads  made  by  the  darting 
sparks  of  a  campfire  with  a  result  not  only  novel  but  fine  ;  but  his 
independence  shows  still  more  in  the  treatment  of  the  subjects 
themselves,  of  which  such  technical  innovations  are  but  incidents. 
The  hunting  of  the  deer  has  occupied  the  attention  of  artists  con- 
tinuously since  the  days  of  the  cave-man ;  but  no  one  else  ever 
painted  a  guide  sprawling  on  his  stomach  over  the  edge  of  a  row- 
boat  holding  a  struggling  buck  by  the  horn  with  one  hand  and 
tryino^  to  cut  his  throat  with  the  other,  while  the  fool  hound  who 


354  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

has  run  the  beast  to  water  does  his  best  to  upset  tlie  boat  by  trying 
to  clamber  in.  It  is  not  a  sportsmanlike  method,  and  moreover  it  is 
out  of  season,  for  the  horns  are  still  in  the  velvet,  a  stray  cut  from 
the  knife  bleeding  red  ;  but  there  was  a  lot  of  deer  meat  got  that 
way  in  the  woods  in  the  bad  old  days  when  game  laws  were  not 
enforced  —  and  some  is  got  that  way  still. 

"  Winter  "  calls  up  many  images,  but  scarcely  a  red  fox,  running 
over  white,  drifted  snow,  under  a  dark  gray  sky  and  chased  by  two 


Fig.  78.  —  Homer:   The  Liee  Line. 

black  crows;  yet  when  the  picture  is  seen  it  approves  itself  as  the 
very  incarnation  of  winter.  These  as  well  as  all  other  pictures  of 
Winslow  Homer's  representing  motion  suggest  another  and  a  very 
personal  characteristic  —  his  exact  feeling  for  weight  and  force.  In 
the  "  Winter  "  the  snow  is  soft  and  dry,  and  offers  no  resistance  to 
the  fox  who  leaps  heavily  through  it ;  the  struggle  between  the  guide 
and  the  deer  gives  just  the  effort  that  each  can  put  forward  under 
the  unfavorable  circumstances  they  find  themselves  in,  and  the  boat 
is  pulled  down  to  just  the  proper  point.  When  a  man  carries  a  pack 
it  settles  on  his  shoulders  and  he  rounds  his  back,  so  that  we  can  gauge 
its  weight  accurately,  and  we  feel  the  momentum  that  in  "  Snap-the- 


FIGURE    PAINTERS   OF   THE   SIXTIES   AND    SEVENTIES         355 

Whip  "  hurls  the  youngsters  at  the  end  over  on  the  grass.  No  other 
artist  has  so  felt  the  weight  of  water,  its  buoyancy,  and  its  enormous 
force.  When  his  boys  sail  a  cat-boat,  it  settles  into  the  waves  and 
tips  to  the  exact  force  of  the  wind  and  pull  on  the  sheet,  and  when 
he  renders  the  power  of  the  sea  no  one  else  approaches  him.  The 
"  Wave  "  of  Courbet,  for  instance,  is  an  excellent  picture,  with  one  of 
the  most  beautiful  skies  ever  painted,  but  the  wave  itself  is  exagger- 
ated and  unconvincing;  but  when  Winslow  Homer's  great  swells  roll 
in  out  of  the  fog,  and  slowly  heap  themselves  up  against  the  granite 
coast  without  foam,  without  effort,  until  with  the  ebb  the  thousands 
of  tons  of  clear  green  water  grind  crashing  down  through  the  crev- 
ices of  the  rocks,  we  feel  the  awful,  elemental  force ;  and  when  his 
bathers  are  rolled  dazed  and  helpless  in  the  undertow,  they  will 
be  saved  no  doubt,  but  it  will  give  two  strong  men  a  struggle  to 
do  it. 

More  stress  than  usual  has  been  laid  upon  the  subjects  in  treat- 
ing of  Winslow  Homer's  work,  because  the  execution  is  intimately 
wrapped  up  with  them.  His  techniqtie  in  oil  differs  from  that  in 
water-color,  and  while  it  has  gained  ease  and  breadth  it  still  remains 
substantially  the  same  as  at  first.  The  figures  are  put  in  with  firm, 
large  outlines,  well  detached  from  the  background,  with  the  high- 
lights (and  it  seems  as  if  almost  all  of  his  early  figures  were  in  sun- 
light) blocked  in  crisply  and  simply.  The  brush  work  is  direct  with 
little  working  over  and  no  glazing,  and  while  he  is  capable  of  elabora- 
tion of  detail  when  it  is  of  the  essence,  as  in  the  clearing  across  whose 
tangle  of  weeds  and  vines  his  "  Two  Guides  "  tramp,  yet  as  a  rule  he 
simplifies  it  as  much  as  possible.  His  color  is  strong  and  sure,  some- 
times a  little  harsh,  but  always  true.  The  writers  who  confuse  tone 
with  values  should  study  his  works.  The  values  are  impeccable,  not 
subtle,  not  overrefined,  but  sure,  every  bit  of  light  and  shadow  hold- 
ing its  place  ;  of  tone,  however,  of  a  pervading  color  note  which  draws 
the  whole  picture  into  a  harmony  there  is  no  trace  except  in  pictures 
like  the  "  Lookout,"  where  Nature  has  charged  herself  with  the  task 
of  providing  it.  For  this  reason  the  pictures  are  not  decorative  in 
the  generally  received  sense.  They  do  not  unite  with  a  wall  as  an 
ornament  on  it  apart  from  their  meaning  as  pictures,  as  Inness's  or 
Whistler's    do.      Time    adds    a    certain    mellowness,    but    they  will 


JD* 


HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 


always  be  windows  opened  in  a  wall  rather  than  squares  of  brocade 
stretched  upon  it. 

In  water-color  the  handling  is  much  more  varied.  In  his  oil 
paintings  he  seems  never  in  a  hurry.  His  picture  is  finished  as  he 
would,  and  we  cannot  imagine  that  longer  time  would  have  changed 
it  a  particle;  but  in  the  swifter,  more  summary  medium  we  feel  the 
hurried  inspiration  of  the  sketch.  The  early  water-colors  approach 
more  closely  to  the  completeness  of  the  oils,  the  later  ones  come  for 
the  most  part  in  series;  records  of  trips  to  Gloucester,  to   England, 


Vie.  79.  —  lIoMEK:    Winter,  Pennsylvania  Academy. 
[Copyright,  1898,  by  The  Pennsylvania  Academy  of  Fine  Arts.] 


to  Bermuda,  or  the  Adirondacks,  each  set  having  a  character  of  their 


own. 


The  English  series  done  about  1883  stand  a  little  apart.  They 
are  pictures,  not  sketches,  and  are  grayer,  subtler,  better  composed 
than  the  others.  The  English  fisher  girls  are  comely  in  a  large,  open- 
air  way,  and  their  poses  have  something  of  classic  rhythm.  They 
brought  him  praises  from  critics  that  had  hitherto  been  recalcitrant, 
and  there  seemed  even  danger  that  he  might  be  moved  toward  pretti- 
ness  rather  than  beauty ;  but  if  there  was  such  a  danger,  it  came  to 
nothing.  He  painted  the  English  girls  as  he  saw  them,  and  he  strove 
to  give  the  delicate  mists  of  the  English  coast,  as  in   Bermuda  he 


FIGURE    PAINTERS   OF   THE   SIXTIES   AND    SEVENTIES        357 

tried  to  give  the  full  strength  of  tropical  color,  a  sea  of  blue  incredi- 
ble to  the  untravelled,  fruits  that  glow  in  the  leaves  and  whitewashed 
walls  that  blaze  with  sunlight,  while  to  support  their  strength  of  color 
the  shadows  are  painted  as  dark  as  possible. 

The  Adirondack  sketches  and  those  made  at  Gloucester  have 
somewhat  the  same  forcible  contrasts,  but  along  with  sunsets  and 
purple  mountains  we  are  not  spared  the  gray  skies  and  black- 
ish shadows.  Wherever  the  subject  is  taken,  however,  the  treat- 
ment is  pure  water-color.  There  is  little  or  no  gouache.  Even  in 
the  English  series  the  pencil  marks  show  through  the  covering 
washes.  In  some  of  the  earlier  pictures  from  the  woods  which 
the  color  hardly  more  than  tints,  this  underlying  drawing  is  still 
more  evident,  and  is  often  masterly,  with  all  the  accidental  felicities 
of  a  trained  hand  drivino-  furiouslv  to  c^et  somehow  the  effect  of  rocks 
or  trees  or  the  jam  of  driftwood  across  a  trout  stream  without  stop- 
ping to  draw  it  carefully.  In  much  of  the  later  work,  and  especially 
in  the  Bermuda  sketches,  there  is  little  of  this  preliminary  drawing. 
It  is  color  and  light  that  is  sought  for,  and  the  strongest  pigments 
in  the  box  are  put  on  in  broad  sweeps.  The  result  is  often  rather 
crude,  but  sometimes  again  there  are  felicities  like  the  "  Land-locked 
Salmon  "  in  the  Boston  Museum,  where  a  thin  wash  of  gray,  a  touch 
or  so  of  pure  black,  and  a  patch  of  untouched  paper  give  all  the  silver 
gleam  of  the  leaping  fish.  It  is  a  wonderful  bit  of  painting,  but  like 
many  another  similar  bit  in  Winslow  Homer's  work  it  appeals  as  such 
only  to  those  curious  in  such  matters,  and  even  to  them  only  sec- 
ondarily. The  first  interest  goes  to  the  fish,  and  is  so  great  that  we 
forget  to  ask  how  it  was  done. 

It  is  this  absorption  in  his  subject  that  makes  it  so  difBcult  to 
compare  Homer  with  other  artists.  To  step  from  a  dealer's  gallery 
into  a  room  filled  with  his  water-colors,  is  as  if  one  left  pictures 
for  reality;  you  like  them  if  you  like  the  things  represented, —  the 
mountain  lakes,  the  dark,  spruce-lined  shores,  the  clear,  thin  air. 
It  is  only  by  making  a  special  effort  that  his  very  great  artistic 
merits  are  recognized,  his  draftsmanship,  his  composition,  his  color, 
and  even  when  that  is  done  the  tendency  is  to  revert  again  to  the 
indwelling  spirit,  the  love  for  the  strong,  free  Jife  of  men  who  fight 
in  the  open  air  against  man,  beast,  or  the  elements,  the  life  that  his 


358  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

crreat  namesake  sang  in  the  clays  before  history.     They  are  Homeric, 

and   if  some  of  the  end-of-the-century  subtleties  seem  too  much  of 

an   Armida's  garden,  we  can   look   into  W'inslow    Homer's  pictures 

and   find   again 

"  like  surf-beat  on  a  western  shore 
The  surge  and  thunder  of  the  Odyssey." 


ASE  :    PORTRAIT. 


.TIAHTHai 


CHAPTER    XIX 

THE    NEW    MOVEMENT 

Increase  of  Wealth  after  the  End  of  the  Civil  War. — Great  Importation 
OF  Foreign  Pictures.  —  As  a  Rule  superior  to  Nature  Work.  —  New  Type  of 
American  Art. —  Students  in  Europe.  —  Their  Skill  and  their  Foreign  Ideals. 

—  Hostility    of    the    Academy    of    Design.  —  Founding    of    the    Society    of 
American    Artists.  —  Difficulties    experienced     by    the     "Younger     Men." 

—  Education  of  the  Country  in  Art 

Of  all  the  men  hitherto  described  none  was  born  later  than  1841, 
and  only  one  or  two  in  that  year.  The  decade  of  the  forties  was 
probably  as  prolific  as  that  preceding  it  in  American  painters, 
but  few  seem  actually  to  belong  to  it.  They  were  either  belated 
members  of  earlier  groups  or  precursors  of  later  ones.  They 
reached  maturity  at  the  close  of  the  Civil  War,  a  time  of  changes 
and  developments  even  greater  than  followed  the  Revolution.  The 
West  had  been  opened,  the  work  of  the  pioneers  had  been  largely 
done,  the  wilderness  had  been  subdued  to  the  use  of  the  farmer 
and  lumberman.  There  were  trade  and  manufactures  in  the  new 
cities,  but  they  were  still  on  a  small  scale  and  intercommunication 
was  difficult.  Great  fortunes  were  rare  and  wealth  was  in  perspective 
rather  than  in  possession.  Life  was  still  simple,  and  there  was  no 
attempt  to  equal  the  luxury  of  Europe. 

There  were  signs  of  a  change  even  before  the  war.  The  fears  of 
the  South  for  the  growing  wealth  and  population  of  the  North  had 
had  much  to  do  with  precipitating  the  conflict.  Just  as  it  was  be- 
ginning Cornelius  Vanderbilt  sold  out  the  ships  that  had  given  him 
his  title  of  Commodore  and  put  the  proceeds  into  the  railroads  that 
were  still  in  their  trial  stage,  and  a  few  years  later  the  satirists 
ridiculed  the  dollars  gained  from  striking  oil  as  well  as  those  from 
shoddy  contracts;  but  the  war  held  back  the  rising  tide  of  prosperity 
until  with  its  close  the  flood  swept  on  with  redoubled  force.  Com- 
pared with  later  developments  the  wealth  of  the  seventies  and  eighties 

359 


360  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

seems  modest  indeed,  but  still  many  people  had  money  far  beyond 
their  ordinary  necessities  which  they  felt  obliged  to  spend,  and  did 
with  some  difficulty  manage  to  spend.  They  gave  more  than  gener- 
ously to  charities  and  all  pious  uses ;  they  gratified  themselves  with 
fast  trotters,  diamonds,  and  chami)agne  ;  they  built  big  and  amazingly 
ugly  houses  and  filled  them  with  furniture  whose  only  excuse  was 
its  cost.  And  with  the  other  things  they  bought  pictures  generously 
and  blindly.  Some  from  personal  friendship  or  from  real  liking  for 
the  work  clung  to  the  native  artists  of  the  Hudson  River  school.  It 
was  in  those  days  that  Bierstadt  and  Church  received  the  prices 
which  seem  incredible  to-day,  and  the  lesser  men  were  propor- 
tionately prosperous.  There  was  patronage  for  all,  but  already  a 
dangerous  rivalry  had  started,  and  foreign  work  was  brought  in  to 
compete  with  the  native  product. 

Pictures  had  always  been  imported  from  the  earliest  colonial 
days,  and  the  influence  of  this  importation  of  foreign  work  on 
the  native  school  was  constant;  but  such  importation  had  been 
modest  in  quantity  and  not  overwhelming  in  quality.  With  the 
seventies  it  became  an  important  business  exploited  with  all  the 
energy  of  the  other  newly  found  methods  of  gaining  wealth.  As 
a  rule  the  dealers  were  men  of  commercial  integrity,  making  large 
profits,  but  making  them  by  perfectly  honorable  dealing;  one  or 
two  of  them,  however,  were  much  more  than  that,  —  connoisseurs  in 
the  best  sense  of  the  word,  understanding  and  loving  good  painting, 
recognizing  the  great  merits  of  some  men  still  unappreciated  in 
France,  counsellingand educating  their  patrons — men  like  Cottier  and 
Samuel  P.  Avery,  to  whom  the  culture  of  the  country  owes  much. 
The)^  forced  upon  the  hesitating  purchasers  the  works  of  Corot  and 
Millet  and  Daubigny,  and  with  others  brought  over  also  the  more 
readily  comprehensible  Meissonicrs  and  Geromes  and  Bouguereaus. 
These  were  for  the  wealthier  and  more  enlightened  patrons;  for  the 
others  there  was  the  whole  school  of  Parisian  genre  painters  with 
their  brilliancy,  their  manifest  skill,  their  deceptive  imitation  of 
textures,  their  amusing  modern  anecdotes  or  reconstruction  of  old 
fashions  and  costumes ;  and  to  them  was  added  the  new  German 
school  of  Munich  with  its  shiny  bitumen  and  bold  brush  work  beside 
which    the  old   Dlisscldorfian    favorites   seemed   faded  and  prosaic. 


THE    NEW   MOVEMENT  361 

The  new  pictures  went  naturally  into  the  new  liouses  with  the  new 
furniture  and  the  new  clothes.  The  invasion  was  inevitable  and  on 
the  whole  beneficial.  The  growing  prosperity  forced  a  departure 
from  the  older,  simpler  mode  of  life.  Men  of  ability  and  character 
found  their  wealth  increasing  far  beyond  their  expectation  or  even 
their  desire;  but  having  the  wealth  they  had  to  spend  it  —  merely  to 
hoard  it  would  have  been  a  confession  of  weakness.  Richesse  oblige 
as  well  as  noblesse ;  taste  had  to  be  formed  which  could  only  be  done 
by  trying  all  things  and  cleaving  to  that  which  was  good.  The 
dealers'  galleries  were  an  education  in  painting  to  which  the  Phila- 
delphia Exposition  of  1876  added  a  wider  knowledge  of  the  decora- 
tive arts  also. 

Against  this  rising  tide  of  foreign  work  the  native  painters 
struggled  manfully,  but  for  a  while  it  was  a  losing  battle.  When  in 
1S56  Cropsey  had  an  auction  sale  of  his  studies  and  sketches,  the 
editor  of  the  Ci-ayon  wrote,  "We  believe  that  in  no  other  country  will 
the  same  class  of  pictures  bring  so  high  prices  as  here,  especially  if 
they  are  painted  by  American  artists;"  but  twenty  years  later  he 
would  hardly  have  added  the  last  clause.  The  purchaser  with  a 
few  hundred  dollars  usually  preferred  Baugniet  or  Toulmouche  to 
Cropsey  at  the  same  price  and  not  unreasonably.  The  old  land- 
scape school  had  at  bottom  appealed  to  a  very  trivial  sentiment,  the 
delight  which  the  average  man  takes  in  the  minute  and  literal  re- 
production of  familiar  objects.  The  better  men  had  by  their  own 
personal  feeling  for  nature  or  beauty  Kfted  themselves  to  a  higher 
plane,  but  by  just  so  much  had  they  alienated  their  patrons  until,  in 
the  case  of  men  like  Inness  and  Homer  D.  Martin,  their  pictures 
were  unsalable  not  only  in  spite,  but  because,  of  their  merits.  It 
seems  ludicrous  now  that  when  they  forsook  the  thin,  minute  hand- 
ling of  their  earlier  work  for  a  broader  style  their  fellow-craftsmen 
argued,  protested,  and  vituperated  against  their  folly,  but  at  the  time 
it  was  a  serious  matter.  It  cost  the  innovators  dear  in  personal 
friendships  and  public  patronage,  for  they  were  not  greatly  benefited 
by  the  education  of  some  of  the  wealthier  buyers  to  the  beauties  of 
breadth,  tone,  and  color.  The  joy  in  purely  artistic  qualities  was  of 
so  late  a  date  and  so  uncertain  that  it  had  to  be  confirmed  by  foreign 
approval  of  the  artists.     It  was  only  after  a  generation  of  struggle 


362  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

and  when  even  second-rate  Barbizon  pictures  had  been  forced  up  to 
prohibitive  prices  that  it  became  generally  admitted  that  some 
Innesses  might  be  as  good  as  some   Diazes. 

The  other  landscape  painters  who  were  unmoved  by  the  new 
influences  and  painted  on  unchanged,  retained  to  a  certain  extent 
their  old  friends  and  patrons;  but  death  and  the  dealers  made  heavy 
inroads  upon  them,  and  besides  many  of  the  artists  themselves  were 
growing  old  —  they  painted  the  old  subjects,  but  without  the  old 
enthusiasm.  In  Cropsey's  later  work,  for  instance,  it  is  difficult  to 
find  any  trace  of  his  earlier  skill  and  feeling.  The  average  of  work- 
manship at  the  Academy  exhibitions  in  the  seventies  was  lamentably 
low,  not  w^orse  perhaps  than  it  had  been  before,  but  seeming  so 
because  it  was  contrasted  wdth  the  clever,  well-executed  canvases 
in  all  the  dealers'  galleries.  The  claim  was  put  forward  for  the 
pictures  in  the  old  Venetian  palace  on  Twenty-third  Street  that  they 
represented  the  national  art,  but  the  bulk  of  them  represented 
nothing  of  the  kind.  To  be  sure,  the  traveller  saw  nothing  like 
them  in  the  Munich  or  Paris  salons,  but  if  perchance  in  the  latter 
city  he  got  into  the  club  exhibitions  of  the  Mirliton  or  the 
Ccrcle  de  La  Rue  Voliiey  where  the  members  could  display  what- 
ever they  pleased,  unhampered  by  juries  of  admission,  he  felt  himself 
at  home  once  more.  There  was  the  same  still-life  of  a  skull,  a  book, 
and  a  meerschaum  pipe  or  a  bunch  of  flowers,  the  same  woolly  land- 
scapes, and  the  same  saccharine  ideal  heads.  It  was  amateur 
work,  weak  and  trivial  in  conception,  fumbling  and  incompetent  in 
execution.  In  both  cases  there  was  a  minority,  an  "unsubmerged 
tenth  "  which  was  of  a  different  quality,  and  between  the  works  of 
the  professional  members  of  the  Paris  Clubs  and  the  best  things  in 
the  National  Academy  of  Design  there  was  a  difference  of  spirit  as 
wide  as  the  Atlantic,  but  no  such  great  difference  of  merit. 

They  are  pleasant  to  look  back  on,  those  old  Academy  exhibitions, 
which  were  an  event  in  the  city's  intellectual  life.  The  poorer  things 
are  forgotten  and  only  the  best  are  recalled,  whose  very  rarity  gave 
them  an  importance  which  no  picture  has  to-day.  The  public  was  not 
surfeited  with  pictures.  Those  that  cared  for  them  had  leisure  to 
study  thoroughly  even  the  lesser  ones  and  extract  what  good  there 
was  in  them,  and  the  artists  themselves  had  something  of  the  same 


THE    NEW   MOVEMENT 


3^3 


thoroughness.  WIilmi  tlic  inspiration  was  trix'ial,  it  was  at  least  ren- 
dered laboriously  and  completely;  but  when  it  was  noble,  as  it  oc- 
casionally was,  the  absorption  of  the  artist  in  his  work,  with  no  desire 
to  make  an  appeal  by  some  single  cleverness  or  amusing  quality,  but 
rather  to  put  into  his  picture  all  that  he  could,  gave  them  a  personal 
and  enduring  interest.  Like  the  Barbizon  w^ork,  they  wear  well  and  do 
not  become  tedious  and  empty  when  some  single  effect  of  handling 
or  color  is  fathomed,  as  happens  in  some  of  the  more  brilliant  can- 
vases that  succeeded  them. 

It  was  not  possible,  however,  for  the  new  generation  to  de- 
velop as  the  best  of  the  men  who  exhibited  in  the  sixties  and 
seventies  did.  American  painting  has  always  been  sensitive  to  the 
general  development  of  art  in  Europe,  taking  what  it  could  assimilate 
and  adapting  it  to  its  use.  The  romantic  movement  in  France  it 
had  received  mainly  through  the  landscapists  of  Barbizon ;  the 
part  of  it  which  the  new  technique  of  Delacroix  represented  with 
its  revolt  against  the  opaque  shadows  and  hard,  dry  modelling  of 
David  and  Ingres  they  knew  only  through  the  mitigated  and  almost 
academic  methods  of  Couture.  The  new  impulse,  which  may  be 
said  to  have  started  in  England  with  the  followers  of  Reynolds, 
finally  spread  to  Germany  and  was  taken  up  by  men  like  the 
younger  Kaulbach,  who  painted  on  grounds  of  the  brownest, 
warmest  bitumen,  with  broad,  sweeping  brush  work,  and  achieved  a 
fascinating  effect  of  dashing  mastery.  Munich  was  the  home  of  the 
new  school,  and  to  Munich  consequently  went  a  troop  of  young 
American  students  so  that  the  city  succeeded  to  Diisseldorf  as  a 
place  of  study,  with  all  the  kindly,  genial  tone  of  the  older  city,  but 
on  an  ampler  scale  and  with  a  newer,  more  aggressive  inspiration. 

David  Neal  was  the  first  to  go,  in  1861,  followed  by  Rosenthal  in 
1865,  and  then  with  the  beginning  of  the  seventies  Shirlaw  and  Chase 
and  Duveneck  and  the  followers  of  Duveneck,  Vinton,  Alexander, 
Bacher,  with  Carl  Marr,  Currier,  Fitz,  and  manv  more.  Paris  even 
was  displaced  for  a  time  in  popular  favor,  and  those  who  did  not  go 
to  Munich  were  apt,  like  Millet,  Minor,  and  Maynard,  to  go  to  some 
place  like  Antwerp,  where  the  instruction  was  excellent,  the  life  quiet 
and  simple,  and  the  methods  taught,  if  without  the  dash  and  brill- 
iancy of  Munich,  yet  richer  in  coloring  and  texture  than  in  France. 


364  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

For  in  the  schools  of  Paris  as  a  rule  the  old  French  feeling  for  form 
was  in  the  ascendant.  Recent  developments  had  modified  it  some- 
what, especially  as  to  the  subjects  for  pictures,  but  accurate,  unrelent- 
ing drawing  from  the  nude  was  the  basis  of  all  instruction,  llie 
enthusiastic  and  enterprising  might  win  the  acquaintance  or  the 
friendship  of  Millet  or  Daubigny  or  Diaz,  but  these  men  kept  no 
schools,  and  the  students  went  for  technical  training  to  the  Ecole 
des  Beaux  Arts,  or  the  academies  of  Julian  or  Colarossi.  It  was 
Gerome  who  taught  Bridgman  and  Eakins  and  Thayer  and  Alden 
Weir  and  Wvatt  Eaton;  Boulanger  and  Lefebvre  in  the  Atelier 
Julian  taught  Dewing  and  Vonnoh  and  the  rest.  Bouguereau  and 
Robert-Fleury  had  classes  in  the  same  atelier:  Bonnat  had  an 
atelier  of  his  own  much  frequented  by  Americans,  and  there  were 
many  more  ;  but  in  general  it  ma)'  be  said  that  these  masters,  whose 
names  still  call  up  grateful  memories  to  hundreds  of  old  pupils,  were 
above  all,  draftsmen,  —  a  fully  rendered  impeccable  charcoal  drawing 
of  the  figure  was  the  basis  of  all  their  teaching.  One  alone,  Carolus- 
Duran,  based  his  instruction  primarily  on  painting;  but  he  admitted 
few  pupils,  though  a  large  proportion  of  them  were  Americans, 
including  Low  and  Beckwith  and  Sargent. 

About  this  multitude  of  students  (and  only  a  fraction  of  them 
have  been  mentioned  by  name)  it  is  impossible  to  generalize  abso- 
lutely, but  it  may  be  pointed  out  that  as  a  rule  they  were  by  no 
means  so  far  advanced  in  their  art  when  they  went  abroad  as  the 
earlier  generation.  Something  of  this  may  be  attributed  to  the  war, 
which  turned  the  aspirations  of  boyhood  to  military  glory  rather  than 
to  the  arts ;  but  more  was  due  to  the  greater  development  of  the  country. 
The  careers  of  Chester  Harding  or  of  Alvan  Fisher  were  no  longer 
possible.  The  old  type  of  itinerant  portrait  painter  was  a  thing  of 
the  past.  Paintings,  engravings,  and  photographs  were  to  be  found 
even  in  the  remote  villages.  The  boy  with  a  knack  for  scrawling  heads 
in  his  school-books  no  longer  in  an  ambitious  moment  borrowed  the 
sign  painter's  colors  and  started  with  the  courage  of  ignorance  to  paint 
the  portraits  of  his  relatives.  Those  men  rushed  straight  to  the  goal 
and  produced  pictures  from  the  first,  bad  pictures,  weak  or  crude  or 
grotesque,  but  still  a  completed  product  which  reflected  something  of 
the  joy  that  the  artist  had  had  in  their  creation  and  which  suited  the 


THE  np:vv  movement 


36; 


taste  of  tlic  artists'  acquaintances  so  tliat  tliey  bouo-jit  them  for  a  few 
dollars.  W'itli  more  practice  and  more  thoiiglit  tlie  pictures  grew  better 
and  the  ])rices  higher,  until  by  the  time  that  the  thousand  dollars  or  so 
that  justified  a  trip  abroad  had  been  saved,  the  artist  was  a  skilful 
craftsman  in  his  way  and  produced  works  which  pleased  his  com- 
j)atriots ;  and  it  was  to  this  foundation  that  he  adapted  what  further 
knowledge  he  received  in  Europe. 

For  the  new  type  of   student   the   surroundings  were   different. 
Such    courageous    ignorance  was   impossible.      There  were  people 


Fig. 


Dlveneck:    Tlkkish  Pm-.k,  Pennsylvania  Academy. 


everywhere  to  point  out  his  deficiencies  so  that  the  necessity  of 
sound  technical  training  was  felt  at  once.  Such  training  was  diffi- 
cult to  get  in  America ;  for  though  drawing-masters  were  plenty, 
and  there  were  some  fairly  ei^cient  schools  like  those  of  the  Penn- 
sylvania Academy  and  the  Academy  of  Design,  yet  even  in  these 
instruction  was  given  on  rather  old-fashioned  lines  and  by  men  of  no 
great  skill  or  wide  reputation.  The  result  of  this  was  to  send  the 
young  aspirants  abroad  to  the  schools  whose  pupils  had  turned  out 
the  works  seen  in  the  dealers'  galleries,  the  skill  of  which  seemed  won- 


366  HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

derful  to  them.  It  was  in  Europe  that  the  famous  government  estab- 
lishments were  to  be  found  with  up-to-date  methods  and  professors 
known  and  honored  throughout  the  world,  and  the  obstacles  to 
frequenting  them  had  diminished.  The  old  diflficulties  of  travel 
had  disappeared.  Railroads  led  from  every  town  to  the  seaports, 
and  thence  regular  lines  of  steamers  made  the  voyage  across  the 
Atlantic  with  less  discomfort  and  danger  than  the  trip  from  Boston 
to  New  York  had  involved  a  generation  before.  There  was  also 
more  money  in  the  country,  and  besides  pictures  were  being  sold  as 
reputable  merchandise  at  prices  which  seemed  to  give  a  good  profit 
to  the  producer.  Many  parents  w^hose  sons  showed  no  aptitude  for 
other  employments  but,  like  Trumbull,  "  pined  for  the  arts,"  were 
willing  to  support  them  a  year  abroad,  at  the  end  of  which  time  it 
was  supposed  they  would  be  able  to  command  a  handsome  income 
from  their  skill.  The  young  enthusiasts  presented  estimates  from 
which  it  appeared  that  life  could  be  lived  with  comfort  and  even  with 
elegance  in  Paris  or  Munich  for  a  triiiing  sum  per  day.  It  was  cheaper 
than  starting  in  business  or  learning  a  profession,  and  so  a  multitude 
of  youths,  some  of  whom  had  never  even  attempted  to  draw  and 
whose  sole  equipment  was  a  distaste  for  ordinary  work  and  a  vague 
enthusiasm,  gained  from  reading  Ruskin  or  La  Vie  de  BoJieme, 
descended  upon  Europe  with  the  conviction  that  they  were  to  be- 
come masters  in  painting. 

Not  all  were  like  this,  not  the  majority  even ;  the  description 
applies  better  to  the  men  of  a  decade  later.  Of  the  men  of  the 
seventies  many  had  painted  or  illustrated  or  w'orked  at  some  form 
of  applied  art,  and  most  had  some  knowledge  of  drawing,  but  even 
of  them  very  few  were  as  yet  full-fledged  painters.  They  found 
the  opportunities  for  study  excellent;  but  art,  as  understood  in  the 
ateliers,  was  longer  than  they  had  expected.  A  year  passed  and 
even  two,  and  yet  to  their  surprise  and  to  the  indignation  of  their 
families  there  was  much  to  learn  before  they  could  produce  a  picture. 
Some  were  forced  to  make  an  untimely  return,  but  some  stayed  on 
until  they  had  learned  what  the  schools  had  to  teach  them,  not  the 
classical  tradition  with  all  its  literary  association,  but  the  technique, 
the  methods  of  work,  which  were  mastered,  in  some  cases  surpris- 
ingly well.     Their  enthusiasm,  their  intelligence,  their  hard  work, 


THE    NEW    MOVEMENT  367 

made  the  Americans  good  students.  They  felt  that  their  time  was 
precious,  and  dihgence  in  the  study  of  the  model  seemed  to  be  the 
way  to  make  the  most  of  it,  and  in  this  they  made  rapid  progress, 
winning  the  school  prizes  and  the  encouragement  of  their  masters. 
In  the  other  branches  of  art  education,  in  composition,  anatomy, 
perspective,  they  took  less  interest,  and  practically  none  at  all  in 
theories  of  aesthetics  or  general  culture. 

Even  the  works  of  the  old  masters,  though  enthusiastically 
admired,  were  seldom  seriously  studied.  They  wanted  to  learn  how 
to  paint  and  were  convinced  that  their  natural  genius  would  supply 
the  rest.  Individuality  was  to  be  preserved  at  any  cost,  and  the 
copying  of  Titian  or  Raphael  might  weaken  the  precious  personal 
quality,  and  so  the  student  obtained  the  desired  originality  by 
imitating  the  innovations  of  those  among  the  younger  painters  of 
the  day  who  seemed  to  them  most  original.  But  by  this  time  they 
had  got  what  they  sought  in  Europe,  and  most  of  them  returned  to 
America.  The  art  which  they  brought  back  with  them  was  some- 
thing of  a  novelty  here.  As  was  natural,  apart  from  the  personality 
of  the  painters  who  were  usually  extremely  American  in  tempera- 
ment, it  was  a  purely  foreign  product,  formed  by  foreign  training  on 
foreign  models,  with  no  reference  to,  or  understanding  of,  American 
tastes.  It  even  appealed  less  to  the  average  man  than  the  imported 
pictures  by  foreigners.  They,  at  least,  took  his  point  of  view  and 
were  for  the  most  part  amusing,  or  pathetic,  or  anecdotic  in  a  way 
that  was  as  easily  comprehensible  as  the  completeness  and  skill  of 
their  workmanship.  When  they  rose  to  higher  flights  and  more 
purely  artistic  qualities,  they  had  behind  them  a  weight  of  European 
approval  in  medals,  decorations,  and  titles  that  carried  conviction  of 
their  merit  with  it. 

The  American  student  on  his  return  had  none  of  these  quali- 
fications. He  was  rarely  able  to  paint  a  clever  genre  picture,  nor 
as  a  rule  did  he  desire  to  do  so.  His  ambition  as  well  as  his 
real  feeling  directed  him  to  more  purely  artistic  qualities,  to  refine- 
ment of  drawing,  beautiful  color,  skilful  handling.  His  ideals 
were  incomplete  and  savored  of  the  school  which  he  had  so  recently 
left,  where  a  well-constructed  figure  or  a  bit  of  strong,  sure  hand- 
ling had  been  enough  to  win  the  praise  and  admiration  of  his  fellows. 


368  HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAIXTIXC; 

He  had  not  yet  learned  the  necessity  of  unity,  the  higlier  composi- 
tion that  makes  of  a  picture  tlie  rounded  expression  of  an  artistic  idea, 
and  yet  his  workmanship  by  all  school  standards  was  so  manifestly 
superior  to  that  current  in  America  that  immediate  recognition  of  its 
merits  seemed  to  him  inevitable. 

The  Academicians,  the  "older  men  "  as  they  were  called  in  the 
controversy  that  followed,  did  not  abdicate  so  readily  as  was  expected. 
The  innovators  had  been  received  with  civility,  even  welcomed  at 
first.  The  artistic  side  of  art,  as  distinguished  from  the  popular,  had 
always  been  represented  at  the  Academy  of  Design,  l.andscapists 
like  Inness  had  developed  within  it;  La  Farge  had  been  a  constant 
exhibitor  since  1862.  Hospitality  had  even  been  shown  to  for- 
eign artists  and  works  by  Meissonier,  Cabanel,  Couture  or  Troyon, 
loaned  by  amateurs  or  dealers,  had  appeared  on  the  walls.  In  1870 
the  H.  \\\  Derby  collection  of  foreign  paintings  formed  part  of  the 
regular  winter  exhibition,  and  in  1873  there  was  a  collection  of 
English  water-colors  and  sketches.  The  works  of  the  students 
abroad  began  to  come  in,  too.  As  far  back  as  1864,  David  Neal 
had  sent  his  first  study  from  Munich,  and  in  1871  there  w-ere  paint- 
ings by  Bridgman  and  Bunce  sent  back  from  Europe.  Chase, 
Wyatt  Eaton,  Low,  and  a  number  of  others  appear  about  the  same 
date  for  a  single  exhibition  or  so;  but  in  their  case  it  meant  their 
departure  for  Europe,  not  their  return.  In  1875  Brush,  Maynard, 
and  Alden  Weir  sent  work,  the  next  year  Lathrop,  Sartain,  and 
Francis  D.  Millet  w^ere  added  to  them,  and  the  new  movement  began 
to  be  talked  about  and  written  of  in  the  newspapers;  but  it  was  in 
1877  that  it  appeared  in  full  force. 

There  had  been  some  complaint  in  ])revious  years  about  the  plac- 
ing of  the  works  of  the  younger  men,  but  that  year  the  hanging 
committee  was  sympathetic;  a  lot  of  new  men  appeared, —  Beck- 
with,  Appleton  Brown,  Montague  Flagg,  Gilbert  Gaul,  Eakins, 
Duveneck.  A  special  effort  wms  made  and  their  pictures  were 
well  placed.  Vov  the  first  time  in  the  history  of  the  Acad- 
emy an  illustrated  catalogue  was  issued,  the  exhibition  was  a 
(Treat  success,  and  the  air  was  filled  with  enthusiasm  over  the 
future  of  American  art.  But  the  older  Academicians  were  not 
pleased.       They  neither   understood    nor   approved    the    new   move- 


THK    NEW    MOVEMENT  369 

mcnt.  There  is  no  book  on  llic  artists  of  tlic  time  as  complete  or  as 
pretentious  as  Dunlap's  or  Tuckerman's,  but  a  good  idea  of  the 
situation  may  be  gained  from  G.  \V.  Sheldon's  Ainerican  Paint- 
ers, published  in  1879.  The  text  was  written  merely  to  accompany  a 
series  of  woodcut  reproductions  of  paintings  so  executed,  according 
to  the  methods  of  the  time,  that  every  scrap  of  individuality  has  dis- 
appeared ;  but  the  lives  are  well  done.  There  are  no  raptures  nor  any 
philosophizing  about  art ;  but  dates  and  details  are  accurately  given, 
and  the  artists'  views  about  art  in  general,  and  especially  about 
certain  foreign  pictures  just  imported,  are  taken  down  in  their  own 
words. 

Inness's  opinion  has  already  been  quoted,  but  he  stood  almost 
alone  in  his  admiration  for  the  French  landscapists.  The  gen- 
eral opinion  agreed  that  "  Half  the  foreign  stuff  that  is  sold 
here  is  a  swindle  on  the  public.  ...  I  can't  think  anything  of 
Corot.  I  can't  understand  him.  .  .  .  Beauty  in  tone,  in  harmony, 
we  can  all  recognize  at  a  glance,  but  I  can't  see  where  Corot's 
'  Orpheus '  has  it."  Corot  was  naturally  the  chief  stumbling-block. 
He  was  "  incomplete  and  slovenly.  His  landscapes  are  ghosts  of 
landscapes.  They  have  neither  technical  nor  literary  excellences." 
Millet's  pictures  are  declared  to  be  "coarse  and  vulgar  in  charac- 
ter; they  are  repulsive.  He  shows  us  only  the  ignorant  and  the 
base  peasant;  he  suggests  nothing  noble  or  high,  nothing  that  is 
not  debased,"  and  the  whole  matter  is  summed  up:  "  Indeed  French 
art  in  my  opinion  scarcely  rises  to  the  dignity  of  landscape  —  a 
swamp  and  a  tree  constitute  its  sum  total." 

It  must  in  fairness  be  declared  that  these  opinions  are  mild 
—  almost  flattering  —  compared  with  those  expressed  by  the  French 
Academicians  about  the  same  men.  When  a  lifetime  has  been  spent 
in  the  pursuit  of  "  beauty  of  tone,  of  harmony,"  and  it  has  been  achieved 
to  the  satisfaction  of  the  painter  in  one  way,  it  is  difificult  for  him  to 
recognize  it  when  it  is  arrived  at  in  an  entirely  different  and  novel 
way.  Much  odium  has  been  heaped  upon  Academicians  in  all  lands 
for  their  inability  to  recognize  the  originality  of  rising  genius,  but 
unjustly.  Such  a  criticism  ignores  the  fundamental  character  of  an 
academy,  which  is  —  to  be  academic.  Its  function  is  to  preserve 
the  methods  and  principles  of  the  masters  of  the  past,  to  apply  them 


0/ 


O 


HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAIN  11 NG 


to  present  needs,  to  teach  them  to  pupils,  and  to  use  them  as  criteria 
for  judging  new  work.  Thus  study  is  made  more  easy,  taste  is  im- 
proved, and  extravagances  repressed;  but  in  tlie  face  of  a  movement 
to  develop  new  methods  for  a  new  situation,  an  academy  can  only 
exercise  an  indirect  influence  offering  to  the  choice  of  the  innova- 
tors the  treasures  of  the  past,  and  inclined  to  think  harshly  of  them  if 
they  do  not  accept  everything  at  the  traditional  valuation. 

This  is  the  excuse  and  the  justification  of  the  French  Academi- 
cians, but   it   hardly  holds   with   those  of  the   Acadcmv  of   Desio'n. 


mM^^- 

..  ^*i»?sia^>:- ." 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^7.  ^y  ^^^^^H^^^^^l 

^tf^ 

^^^r    -        '    ^  '  ^KS|P 

^^^^  //  '■' 

V    ■  ■    ' 

^^^B^^^^ 

mIHUHk^i^  -v-7^^^ 

•'^°*^'*SfcLs^--„  ■ 

fiG.     8 1 . S 1 1 1  K I  .A  W  :      1*1  tJ  I  •  K  KS. 


They  had  no  such  knowledge  or  practice  as  would  make  of  them  the 
conservators  of  the  great  traditions,  although  haxing  for  so  long  been 
at  the  head  of  all  the  art  there  was  in  the  country,  some  of  them 
honestly  thought  they  had.  Their  attitude  toward  the  younger  men 
was  absolutely  human  ;  they  had  received  and  hung  the  first  pictures 
offered  by  them,  and  though  the  tendencies  displayed  seemed 
unsound,  they  were  ready  to  welcome  the  ])ainters  in  their  proper 
role  as  modest  beginners,  and  allow  them  with  time  to  work  up 
to  a  proper  position,  so  that  on  the  death  of  the  older  generation 
art  might  not  perish  from  the  land.     To  their  surprise  they  found 


THE    NEW    MOVEMENT  371 

the  returning  students  unwilling  to  accept  any  such  position.  With 
more  than  the  average  self-confidence  of  youth,  considering  them- 
selves full-blown  artists  and  the  mass  of  the  Academicians  as  futile 
old  duffers  whose  work  was  incompetent  or  trivial,  they  did  not 
hesitate  to  say  so  and  even  found  critics  to  echo  their  sentiments 
in  print. 

Even  so,  a  viodus  vivcudi  might  have  been  patched  u})  if  it  had 
not  been  for  the  limitations  of  the  old  Academy  building.  With  its 
great  staircase  surrounded  with  Gothic  arches  on  granite  columns,  it 
had  a  rather  effective  interior,  but  it  was  a  poor  place  to  hang  pic- 
tures. The  south  gallery  was  the  only  good  one,  the  smaller  ones 
were  almost  all  bad,  and  in  the  corridor  around  the  staircase  there 
were  shadowy  depths  that  the  eye  could  scarcely  penetrate.  High 
on  the  wall  in  these  remote  retreats,  invisible  to  all,  were  hung  pic- 
tures from  Munich  and  Paris  upon  which  their  authors  had  depended 
to  win  fame  and  fortune,  and  great  was  the  indignation  thereat.  But 
it  was  only  a  trifle  compared  to  the  rage  when  in  1877  certain  of 
the  Paris  and  Munich  pictures  occupied  eligible  places  on  the  line 
in  the  south  gallery,  and  some  works  of  the  Academicians  were 
"skied"  or  relegated  to  dark  corners.  They  were  insulted  in  their 
own  house.  Their  vested  rights  were  in  danger.  It  was  "most 
intolerable  and  not  to  be  endured,"  and  so  at  the  next  meeting  a 
law  was  passed  giving  to  each  Academician  an  absolute  right  to 
"seven  feet  on  the  line"  at  all  exhibitions,  which  transferred  the 
weight  of  indignation  back  to   the   other   party  once  more. 

More  was  involved  than  a  mere  question  of  wounded  pride ; 
there  were  practical  considerations.  The  new  men  were  unknown, 
they  had  to  gain  patrons  to  purchase  their  pictures,  and  the  chief 
stage  whereon  rising  talent  might  display  itself  had  been  the  exhibi- 
tions at  the  Academy.  With  their  pictures  rejected  or,  worse  yet, 
hung  so  that  they  could  not  be  seen,  there  was  no  way  of  reaching 
the  public  ;  and  moreover  their  work  was  branded  as  inferior  by  the 
majority  of  the  Academicians  w^hose  opinion  still  carried  weight. 
There  was  much  indignation  and  hard  language  on  both  sides,  and 
finally  the  opposition  movement  culminated  on  June  i,  1877,  when 
in  Miss  Helena  De  Kay's  studio,  she  with  Saint  Gaudens,  W'yatt 
Eaton,  and  Shirlaw  met  and  organized   the   Society  of   American 


372  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

Artists,  encouraged  thereto  possibly  l^y  an  exliibition  held  a  couple 
of  years  previously  in  the  rooms  of  Cottier  &  Co,  to  which  Miss  De 
Kav,  Miss  Oakey,  Francis  Lathrop,  Thayer,  and  Albert  Ryder  con- 
tributed. It  was  a  more  courageous  act  than  it  seems  now  when 
new  groups  of  artists  are  being  formed  continually.  Then  the 
Academy  of  Design  stood  alone  and  was  a  powerful  body,  with 
ample  means,  owning  its  own  galleries  and  possessing  a  social  influ- 
ence more  important  still.  As  has  been  said,  the  old  Academicians 
were  men  pleasant  socially,  and  of  unexceptionally  high  character; 
for  a  generation  the  men  of  wealth  or  position  who  cared  for  art  had 
sought  them  out,  received  their  counsel,  and  prized  their  friendship. 
They  had  grown  old  together,  and  that  a  lot  of  young  fellows 
hardly  of  age,  fresh  from  the  schools,  should  try  to  supplant  them 
was  unmannerly  and  indecent. 

In  spite  of  opposition,  however,  the  new  society  persisted,  and 
in  March  of  the  next  year  opened  its  first  exhibition  in  the  Kurtz 
Gallery  with  a  membership  of  twenty-two.  Of  these  nearly  half 
were  of  the  old  Academy,  and  of  its  best:  La  Farge,  Inness,  Thomas 
Moran,  Homer  D.  Martin,  Tiffany,  Samuel  Colman,  Swain  Gifford, 
and  some  others  of  like  quality.  F^our  new  members  were  added 
the  next  year,  the  following  year  three  ;  but  as  two  old  ones  dropped 
out  the  net  o-ain  was  onlv  one.  After  that,  however,  the  g-rowth  was 
rapid,  the  membership  rising  to  fifty-two  in  iS8i,  and  passing  the 
hundred  mark  in  iS88,  which  number  has  never  been  greatly 
exceeded.  At  its  beginning  the  new  society  was  not  a  powerful 
organization.  It  had  no  money  nor  any  efficient  backing.  It  had 
no  rooms,  but  met  in  the  studios  of  its  members  and  held  its 
exhibitions  when  and  where  it  could  ;  in  the  Kurtz  Gallery,  in  the 
American  Art  Galleries,  in  the  Yandell  Gallery,  one  year,  during 
the  summer,  in  the  Metropolitan  Museum,  one  year  in  the  Academy 
of  Design  itself,  and  one  year  (1885)  there  was  no  exhibition.  The 
longest  use  of  any  one  place  was  at  the  k^ifth  A\enue  (ialleries, 
which  were  occupied  by  four  exhibitions  from  1889  to  1892.  Such 
wanderings  might  make  an  active  association,  but  hardly  a  dignified 
one. 

The  Society  had  all  the  struggles  of  a  new  organization  that  strives 
to  replace  an  old  and  honored  one,  and  its  sole  valuable  possession 


THE    NEW   MOVEMENT  373 

was  a  grievance.  It  had  not  even  unity  among  its  members  nor  a 
single  aim.  But  the  grievance  was  a  valid  one.  The  Academy  as  a 
body  was  not  fair  either  in  selecting  pictures,  in  hanging  them,  or  in 
electing  new  members.  They  were  unduly  moved  by  personal 
friendships  and  dislikes,  and  by  a  taste  in  art  which,  though  honest 
and  inevitable,  was  yet  too  narrow  for  the  times.  The  Society  of 
American  Artists  started  with  the  principle  that  there  should  be  no 
limit  to  its  membership,  that  any  artist  proving  himself  competent 
to  do  good  work  of  any  kind  should  be  elected  and  given  equal 
powers  in  the  management  of  the  Society,  but  that  the  members 
should  have  no  favors  shown  them  in  public  exhibitions.  There 
was  even  a  law  passed  that  all  pictures  submitted  to  the  jury  of 
admission  should  have  their  signatures  covered,  but  this  law,  which 
was  rather  a  manifestation  of  principle  than  a  practical  measure, 
was  soon  repealed.  There  was  no  rule  requiring  that  pictures 
should  be  sent  exclusively  to  the  Society,  and  most  men  sent  also 
to  the  Academy  whose  rule  giving  seven  feet  of  space  on  the  line 
to  its  members  was  also  withdrawn.  Many  of  the  Academicians 
returned  the  compliment  and  showed  their  work  with  the  younger 
association,  but  there  was  a  decided  difference  between  the  two 
exhibitions. 

The  Society  was  composed  of  men  not  long  removed  from 
the  student  state,  its  rapid  increase  in  membership  being  caused 
by  the  influx  of  men  returning  from  Europe  after  learning  more 
or  less  thoroughly  their  trade.  Their  admiration  was  especially 
drawn  to  displays  of  the  skill  which  they  had  just  been  striving 
to  gain  so  that  the  exhibitions  were  full  of  "  Studies "  and 
"  Sketches,"  with  occasionally  a  big  "  Salon  Picture,"  wherewith, 
as  with  a  sort  of  thesis,  the  young  aspirant  graduated  from  the 
atelier,  and  demonstrated  his  ability  as  an  independent  artist.  These 
latter  works,  however,  were  sent  quite  as  often  to  the  Academy,  the 
fact  of  their  having  been  accepted  at  Paris  or  Munich  (possibly 
with  an  "  honorable  mention  "  besides)  being  supposed  sufficient  to 
impress  even  the  Academy  hanging  committee. 

The  work  represented  the  very  latest  ideals  that  had  swept  through 
the  foreign  schools  and  aroused  the  enthusiasm  of  the  transatlantic 
students,  who  were  embarrassed  by  no  art  traditions  whatever,  and 


374 


HISTORY    OF    AMERICAN    PAIXTIXG 


who  were  eager  to  gain  distinction  in  the  shortest  way.  Nor  were 
the  ideals  alike.  At  the  first  the  Munich  men  and  the  Paris  men 
were  in  striking  contrast,  and  each  year  sent  back  new  enthusiasts 
possessed  of  a  new  and  infallible  view-point.  Whether  it  was  the  tonal 
picture  or  the  open  air  study,  the  minute  realism  of  Bastien-Le  Page 
or  the  dots  of  the  impressionists,  the  latest  novelty  in  art  appeared 
promptly  on  the  walls  of  the  Society's  exhibition,  to  the  pride  of  the 
practitioner  and  the  amazement  of  the  simple-minded.  In  this  way 
the  Society  fulfilled  its  mission  and  was  a  means  of  enlightenment 
to  many  that  dwelt  in  darkness.  The  scoffer  who  came  to  ridicule 
the  remarkable  landscapes  with  the  blue  shadows  or  the  broadly 
smeared  pictures  (he  knew  that  he  could  paint  better  than  that 
himself)  sometimes  remained  to  declare  that  there  was  something 
in  them ;  but  the  Society  itself  profited  less  than  might  have  been 
expected.  It  was  never  a  social  power  like  the  Academy,  nor  did 
it  or  its  members  ever  taste  the  financial  prosperity  that  the  older 
institution  enjoyed  at  one  time.  It  began  when  the  old  type  of 
American  art  w^as  outworn  and  when  the  new  was  still  crude  and 
unformed,  and  it  had  to  face  the  strongest  competition  with  foreign 
work  and  the  greatest  prejudices  and  timidity  of  native  taste.  Even 
those  W'ho  applauded  the  new  movement  usually  spent  their  money 
for  foreign  pictures  or  photographs  of  old  masters,  and  of  the  epoch- 
making  Academy  exhibition  of  1878  it  is  recorded  that  though 
admission  fees  increased  sales  diminished.  When  the  "younger" 
men  went  abroad  to  study,  painting  was  a  lucrative  profession  ;  when 
they  returned,  they  found  that  it  was  not  possible  for  a  man  to  live  by 
it,  even  if  he  were  talented,  well  taught,  and  hard  working.  Hardly 
one  succeeded  in  supporting  himself  by  painting,  and  the  rare  excep- 
tions w^ere  mostly  portrait  painters.  The  rest  were  forced  to  treat 
painting  as  a  sort  of  self-indulgence  and  to  turn  to  illustrating,  teach- 
ing, or  wTiting  to  get  ready  money.  But  for  these  latter  vocations  there 
was  ample  demand.  Not  in  the  great  cities  alone  but  still  more  in 
the  smaller  towns  the  nation  was  educating  itself  to  a  higher  stand- 
ard of  taste.  This  was  due  partly  to  the  increasing  wealth,  but 
there  were  many  contributing  factors.  There  was  the  leaven  of 
the  old  New  pjigland  "high  thinking,"  there  was  the  national  pride 
that    demanded    that    everything  from   a  rolling-mill   to  an  etching 


THE    NEW   MOVEMENT 


375 


should  be  the  best  in  the  world,  and  the  corresponding  individual 
pride  that  was  unwilling  to  be  inferior  in  any  of  the  forms  of  cul- 
ture. Photography  had  been  perfected  so  that  the  spirit  of  great 
masterpieces  could  be  reproduced  with  a  verity  unknown  to  the 
engravings  or  lithographs  of  an  earlier  date.  Travel  w^as  becoming 
general,  and  pictures  and  works  of  the  applied  arts  as  well  were  being 
imported  not  only  from  Europe,  but  from  Japan  and  China,  and  to 
this  must  be  added  the  natural  desire  for  novelty  and  for  new  fash- 
ions in  place  of  the  old. 

These  new  interests  were  fostered  and  catered  to  by  the  three 
magazines,  Scribiiers,  Harper  s,  and  the  Ceuhiry.  Scribners  took  the 
lead  (the  old  Scribners,  now  the  Century),  but  the  others  were  soon 
drawn  into  the  movement.  There  w^ere  articles  critical  and  descrip- 
tive of  the  new  arts  and  artists,  a  new  school  of  wood-engraving  grew 
up  to  answ^er  the  new-found  appreciation  of  texture  and  tone,  wdiich 
with  improved  printing  made  possible  a  new  and  better  class  of  illus- 
trators. There  was  a  public  which  delighted  in  these  things,  much 
the  same  public  that  had  read  Ruskin,  —  and  still  read  him,  —  for  the 
most  part  in  absolute  ignorance  of  what  the  masterpieces  that  he 
praised  or  blamed  were  like,  but  filled  with  vague  emotions  from  his 
perfervid  eloquence.  They  felt  that  they  "ought  to  be  able  to  talk 
about  art,"  and  they  were  greatly  interested  in  the  new  movements 
which  the  improved  methods  of  reproduction  gave  them  better  means 
of  iudo^ino;  than  thev  had  had  before  ;  but  even  so  it  was  the  emotional 
and  anecdotic  side  which  appealed  to  them.  They  adored  Millet 
much  more  because  he  was  a  peasant  painter  than  because  he  \vas  a 
good  one.  They  were  eager  to  learn  the  details  of  artist  life,  they 
rejoiced  in  the  articles  descriptive  of  the  meetings  and  excursions  of 
the  Tile  Club,  they  strove  to  take  the  artist's  standpoint,  admiring 
the  slightest  sketches  that  showed  any  technical  quality ;  they  w^anted 
instruction,  lectures,  articles  in  the  magazines,  illustrations,  but  there 
their  desires  stopped.  They  did  not  want  American  paintings. 
Those  who  had  much  money  to  spend  bought  foreign  work,  those 
who  had  little  contented  themselves  with  photographs  of  it,  and  the 
American  painters  were  encouraged  to  write  about  their  art  or  teach 
it,  or  even  to  exhibit  it,  but  rarely  to  sell  it. 

The  clash  between  the  old  and  new  has  been  described   as   it 


376  HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

happened  in  New  York ;  it  was  strongest  and  most  personal  there. 
No  other  artist  societies  compared  in  importance  with  the  Academy 
of  Design  and  the  Society  of  American  Artists,  and  the  great  major- 
ity of  the  returning  students  made  the  city  their  headquarters;  but 
the  same  movement  was  felt  everywhere,  not,  however,  willi  llie  same 
strong  animosities.  The  more  common  manifestation  was  a  revived 
interest  in  art  and  increased  facilities  for  its  study  or  display.  The 
Philadelphia  Academy  moved  into  its  new  building  in  1876  and  re- 
sumed its  spring  exhibitions  there.  Boston,  whose  Art  Ckib  was 
founded  as  far  back  as  1S55,  under  the  influence  of  Hunt  and  the 
new  movement  generally,  was  moved  to  new  enthusiasm.  Chicago 
and  other  western  cities  followed  until  over  the  whole  country 
there  were  art  schools,  societies,  and  galleries.  The  course  of  in- 
struction in  the  "Art  Institutes  "  was  sometimes  limited  to  twelve 
lessons  in  china  painting  for  ten  dollars,  and  the  taste  displayed  was 
often  crude  or  trivial.  There  was  little  knowledge  of  art,  and  the 
lack  of  any  real  standards  of  appreciation  was  responsible  for  the 
production  of  much  sloppy  literature  and  amateurish  work,  but 
the  interest  in  art  was  awakened  and  went  on  with  a  continuous 
development. 

The  last  quarter  of  the  century  saw  a  marvellous  development 
of  the  nation  in  the  direction  of  culture.  It  was  preparatory,  and  its 
actual  achievements  were  so  tentative  and  unsatisfactory  that  we  are 
apt  to  miss  its  importance.  Even  to-day  the  actual  visible  work  has 
hardly  begun,  but  the  taking  of  a  whole  nation,  whose  ideals  hitherto, 
although  high,  had  still  been  purely  material,  intellectual,  or  moral, 
and  endowing  it  with  some  perception  of  the  beauties  of  art,  is  an 
accomplishment  probably  without  any  parallel  —  at  least  on  such 
an  enormous  scale.  If  the  future  historian  traces  to  it  as  a  cause 
the  noble  monuments  and  higher  culture  which  haply  he  may  have 
to  chronicle,  he  may,  perhaps,  also  find  a  kindly  word  for  those 
"younger  men"  who  with  talent  and  enthusiasm  struggled  to  bring 
to  the  country  the  higher  foreign  workmanship  and  adapt  it  to  our 
uses,  and  who  as  a  rule  got  little  praise  and  less  profit  for  it. 


CHAPTER   XX 

THE   SOCIETY   OF   AMERICAN    ARTISTS 

Members  of  the  Society  of  American  Artists. —The  Munich  Men.  —  Neal. — Mark. 
—  Rosenthal.  —  Duveneck.  —  Shirlaw.  —  Dielman.  —  Chase.  —  Antwerp  and  the 
Smaller  Schools.  —  The  Paris  Men.  —  Sartain. — Wyatt  Eaton.  —  J.  Alden 
Weir.  —  Will  H.  Low.  —  Other  Schools.  —  Lathrop.  —  George  Fuller. — 
Ryder.  —  Growth  of  the  Society  of  American  Artists.  —  The  American  Fine 
Arts  Society 

Stress  has  been  laid  on  the  fact  that  the  founders  of  the  Society 
of  American  Artists  were  but  little  beyond  the  student  stage  of  their 
development.  With  each  year  this  condition  changed.  Their  art 
broadened  and  fitted  itself  as  best  it  could  to  its  surroundinors.  The 
Munich  section,  which  in  the  beginning  was  the  most  important,  had 
the  greatest  difficulty  in  adapting  itself,  nor  did  it  as  a  school  long 
persist.  The  men  trained  there  showed  its  influence  to  the  end,  but 
they  altered  their  workmanship  in  its  more  apparent  features  and 
they  were  not  reenforced  by  younger  recruits  —  the  city  in  a  few  years 
almost  ceasing  to  be  a  resort  for  American  students.  Of  the  earlier 
men,  some  (mostly  of  German  blood,  though  born  in  America),  after 
trying  their  own  land  with  small  encouragement,  returned  to  Munich 
and  are  now  properly  counted  as  of  the  German  school.  David 
Neal  was  born  as  far  back  as  1837,  Toby  Edward  Rosenthal  in 
1848,  and  Carl  Marr  a  decade  later.  These  men  not  only  mastered 
the  Munich  technique  and  mastered  it  thoroughly  (some  heads  by 
Neal,  for  example,  would  have  done  honor  to  any  of  his  professors), 
but  they  also  assimilated  the  Munich  ideals,  the  whole  mental  and 
emotional  view-point  of  the  school,  so  that  we  search  their  works  in 
vain  for  a  trace  of  anything  distinctly  American.  They  have  exe- 
cuted numerous  figure  compositions  which  take  high  places  among 
the  productions  of  the  contemporary  German  school  and  which  like 
the  others  only  fail  from  a  certain  lack  of  distinction. 

There  is  something  heavy  in  the  best  of  them.  When  Rosenthal 
sent  his  "  Elaine  "  to  the  Centennial  Exhibition  at  Philadelphia,  a 

377 


378  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

critic  characterized  it  as  "a  good  loud  translation  of  our  liouschold 
Tennyson  into  the  dialect  of  Munich,"  and  the  phrase  gives  a  fair  idea 
of  the  picture.  Well  drawn,  well  painted,  well  composed,  with  a  sort 
of  pathos  and  a  sort  of  picturesqueness  and  a  sort  of  richness,  it  was 
sure  of  popular  admiration,  for  it  expressed  the  popular  conception 
of  the  scene  as  the  public  would  have  expressed  it  if  they  had  had 
the  training,  and  as  a  dozen  other  Munich  painters  would  have  done 
had  they  chosen  the  subject.  Neither  in  conception  nor  in  execu- 
tion is  there  any  trace  of  a  lofty  or  subtle  insight  for  beauty  personal 
to  the  artist.  The  merits  and  the  faults  of  the  slightest  of  Whist- 
ler's etchings  would  be  equally  impossible  to  it.  The  same  thing 
may  be  said  of  Marr  s  work,  though  the  huge  canvas  of  the  "  Flagel- 
lants "  is  more  seriously  painted,  with  traces  of  real  feeling,  but  not 
enough  to  make  the  higher  artistic  qualities  dominant  in  a  picture 
depending  for  its  interest  on  its  dimensions  and  on  the  strangeness 
of  the  scene  represented.  The  workmanship  is  more  sincere  than 
Rosenthal's.  The  canvas  was  the  labor  of  years,  but  after  all  it  is 
only  the  recounting  of  a  rather  repulsive  historical  anecdote  in  a  way 
and  on  a  scale  wOiich,  wdiile  it  makes  it  the  delight  and  w^onderment 
of  the  great  international  exhibitions,  renders  it  unfit  for  any  other 
surroundings. 

Another  of  the  Munich  students  of  quite  a  different  type,  but 
w^ho  equally  failed  of  appreciation  in  his  own  country,  was  Henry 
Muhrman,  whose  water-colors  were  broadly  executed  with  rich,  flow- 
ing brush  w^ork,  very  beautiful  in  tone  and  suggesting  the  recent  work 
of  Holland  quite  as  much  as  of  Germany;  but  though  the  critics 
praised,  the  buying  public  held  timidly  aloof,  and  he  has  been  obliged 
to  seek  in  London  the  success  denied  him  here.  With  him  might 
be  mentioned  J.  Frank  Currier,  who  with  something  of  the  same 
breadth  of  handling  failed  likewise  for  along  time  of  the  appreciation 
that  he  merited,  though  he  is  now^  receiving  a  tardy  recognition. 

This  immediate  ap{)reciation  that  w^as  denied  to  most  of  the  re- 
turning artists  was  still  gained  by  a  few,  but  by  none  to  an  equal 
degree  with  Duveneck,  though  it  came  from  Boston  rather  than 
New  York.  He  had  sent  a  single  picture  there  that  was  so  novel, 
so  striking,  that  in  1875  the  Boston  Art  Club  specially  invited  him 
to  display  his  work.     The  five  canvases  that  he  sent  created  a  sen- 


FIG.   82.  — J.   ALDEN   WEIR:    ROSE   PINK   BODICE. 
[Copyright,  1905,  by  N.  E.  Montross.] 


THE   SOCIETY    OF   AMERICAN    ARTISTS  381 

sation,  the  critics  hailed  liini  as  a  master,  he  was  urged  to  leave 
Cincinnati  and  come  to  Boston,  and  a  dozen  commissions  for  por- 
traits were  promised  liim  there  ;  but  he  was  not  yet  wilHng  to  forsake 
the  training  and  surroundings  of  Europe.  He  went  back  to  Munich 
and  afterward  to  the  little  town  of  Polling,  where  he  worked  sur- 
rounded by  a  group  of  students  who  looked  up  to  him  as  their 
master  and  who  accompanied  him  to  Venice  and  Florence  and  else- 
where in  Italy  on  painting  trips.  Finally  when  he  returned  to  make 
America  his  home  the  new  movement  had  advanced  and  his  work 
was  less  of  a  novelty. 

The  canvases  that  so  electrified  Boston  seem  to-day  typical  of  a 
school  rather  than  of  a  distinctly  original  artist.  They  are  the  very 
essence  of  Munich  in  the  seventies  with  their  rich,  bituminous  back- 
grounds, their  unctuous  brush  work,  and  their  resemblance  to  dark- 
ened, time-stained  old  masters;  but  it  is  the  Munich  of  a  young  and 
greatly  daring  man  who  had  got  the  trick  and  who  executed  it  with 
a  slap-dash  bravura,  delighting  in  his  strength  and  without  too  labo- 
rious or  profound  investigation.  Whether  it  be  a  Turkish  page  or  a 
professor  or  a  schusterbiib,  the  face  is  wiped  in  with  warm  brown 
color  in  facile  brush  strokes  whose  breadth  is  unimpaired  by  subse- 
quent "  repentances  "  and  which  give  a  characterization  no  more 
profound  and  no  less  amusing  than  the  illustrations  in  Flicgcnde 
Blatter. 

Even  in  Munich  itself  Duveneck  was  looked  up  to  as  a  leader, 
and  his  brilliancy  and  dash  found  many  imitators  and  w^ere  important 
factors  in  shaping  the  style  of  the  school.  Extraneous  circumstances 
have  prevented  his  art  from  developing  naturally  and  completely. 
There  has  been  ill-health,  there  has  been  domestic  sorrow,  there  has 
been  a  turning  aside  for  a  while  to  the  study  of  sculpture,  and  the 
noble  monument  to  his  wife  contains  those  deeper  emotional  quali- 
ties that  are  lacking  in  his  youthful  work.  The  time  devoted  to 
teaching  and  perhaps  also  the  fact  that  he  has  lived  out  of  contact 
with  his  old  comrades  has  combined  wuth  the  other  factors  to  make 
his  recent  production  smaller  and  less  important  than  was  to  have 
been  hoped.  His  painting  has  changed  in  character  also,  and 
bitumen  and  darkness  have  been  abandoned  to  some  extent  for 
light  and  even  cool,  gray  shadows. 


3S2  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

The  Munich  liandling  generally  had  to  be  changed  to  fit  it  to 
American  surroundings  or  to  suit  a  taste  formed  by  the  later  open- 
air  school.  The  inHuence  of  the  training  was  permanent,  but  showed 
indirectly.  Almost  the  only  man  who  has  retained  consistently  the 
old  manner  is  Shirlaw,  in  whose  works  the  Munich  style  is  usually 
immediately  recognizable.  It  is  rather  curious  that  it  should  be  so, 
for  he  was  not  of  German  stock.  Though  brought  to  America  when 
onl}'  two  years  old,  he  was  born  in  Scotland,  and  his  early  training 
came  through  an  apprenticeship  to  learn  bank-note  engraving  and 
afterward  by  study  in  the  schools  of  the  Academy  of  Design,  He 
had  practised  painting  and  exhibited  and  was  over  thirty  when  he 
went  to  Munich,  but  the  six  or  seven  years  he  spent  there  removed 
all  traces  of  the  earlier  training.  "  Tuning  the  Bell  "  (done  in  1874) 
and  "Sheep  Shearing  in  the  Bavarian  Highlands  "  (1876)  are  typical 
Munich  pictures  and  good  ones ;  and  so  also  was  the  "  Marble 
Quarry  "  of  1880,  but  the  quarry  was  in  New  England,  and  the  work- 
men and  the  oxen  native-born  Americans.  The  other  men  had 
confined  themselves  mostly  to  painting  bric-a-brac  or  portraits,  and 
it  was  somethino;  of  a  shock  to  see  an  actual  New  Enijland  scene 
"translated  into  the  dialect  of  Munich,"  so  that,  though  admirably 
done,  the  public  failed  somehow  to  encourage  the  venture  as  it 
deserved.  It  was  the  decorative  side  of  Shirlaw's  work  which  was 
the  more  successful  rather  than  the  realistic,  not  only  in  his  designs 
for  stained  glass  or  similar  work,  but  also  in  his  easel  pictures. 
The  handling  is  broad  and  flowing,  the  drawing  large  and  simple, 
the  color,  even  when  light  in  key,  still  keeps  the  warm  tones  of 
Munich,  and  the  whole  canvas  has  a  sort  of  decorative  unity  of 
tone  and  texture  very  different  from  the  minute  dependence  on 
the  model  which  was  taught  in  France.  P^ven  in  Munich  and  in 
Dietz's  studio  other  manners  of  work  could  be  learned.  Dielman, 
who  was  in  turn  treasurer  and  secretary  of  the  new  Society  of 
American  Artists,  as  Shirlaw  was  its  first  president,  drew  from  the 
beginning  with  minute  care  the  i^c/nr  j^ictures  or  the  graceful  heads, 
showing  with  almost  monumental  dignity  against  the  leafy  back- 
grounds which  are  characteristic  of  him,  and  he  has  kept  his  original 
manner  with  no  great  change. 

Of  all  the  Munich  men,  however,  the  one  who  exerted  the  great- 


THE   SOCIETY   OF   AMERICAN   ARTISTS  383 

est  inlluence  upon  American  painting  both  by  his  instruction  and 
his  example  was  William  M.  Chase.  He  was  born  in  Indiana,  and 
there  found  a  portrait  painter  to  give  him  his  earliest  instruction. 
When  he  was  twenty  he  came  on  to  New  York  and  studied  a  couple 
of  years  in  the  schools  of  the  Academy  of  Design,  and  then  in  1871 
started  practising  art  in  St.  Louis,  painting  mostly  still-life.  There 
he  saw  the  studies  made  in  Munich  by  John  Mulvaney,  which 
deternlined  him  to  go  to  Germany  himself.  He  studied  under 
Wagner  and  Piloty,  and  was  one  of  their  most  brilliant  pupils,  but 
rather  intractable  to  advice,  the  main  trouble  seeming  to  have  been 
that  he  had  no  desire  to  compose  the  regular  exhibition  pictures,  but 
preferred  to  work  at  still-life  or  subjects  which  were  largely  excuses 
for  brilliant  execution.  Toward  the  end  of  his  six  years'  stay  he 
painted  a  number  of  such  canvases  as  the  "  Broken  Jug,"  the 
"  Apprentice,"  "  Ready  for  the  Ride,"  and  others  ;  and  the  next  year  at 
Venice  the  "  Portrait  of  Duveneck,"  the  unconventional  attitude  of 
which,  the  head  only  showing  above  the  back  of  a  chair,  shocked 
some  critics  as  a  sort  of  indecorum. 

Duveneck  may  have  exercised  some  influence  on  Chase's  painting 
at  this  time.  They  were  certainly  in  sympathy,  and  their  work  had 
much  resemblance ;  but  from  the  time  when  he  left  Venice  to  take 
charge  of  the  painting  classes  of  the  Art  Students'  League,  Chase's 
art  has  developed  along  independent  lines.  Unlike  Duveneck  and 
too  many  of  the  other  Munich  men,  there  has  been  no  retrogression 
or  falling  out  of  the  battle  even  temporarily.  For  thirty  years  he 
has  been  on  the  firing  line,  painting,  teaching,  lecturing  with  amazing 
and  unconquerable  energy.  In  the  early  days  when  the  similitude  of 
a  battle  was  more  apposite  than  at  present,  he  was  counted  among 
the  most  prominent  and  aggressive  leaders  of  the  new  movement; 
for  ten  years  he  was  president  of  the  Society  of  American  Artists, 
and  his  studio  in  the  Tenth  Street  building  served  for  its  meetings 
and  as  a  rallying  place  for  its  friends  until,  in  fact,  their  cause  was 
practically  gained. 

During  this  long  time  his  production  was  continuous  and  very 
varied,  —  still-life  and  genre,  landscape  and  portrait;  done  in  oil,  in 
water-color,  in  black  and  white,  and  in  pastel.  He  has  tried  all 
branches  of  painting  and  all  mediums,  and  has  used  all  in  constantly 


384  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN   PAINTING 

varying  manners.  The  old  biluininous  shadows  of  Munich  soon 
disappeared  from  his  work,  to  be  but  seldom  reem})loyed.  The  gen- 
eral tone  became  bright  and  luminous,  the  color  pure  and  sparkling, 
the  handling  always  suited  to  the  material,  whether  oil  or  pastel  or 
charcoal.  Through  all  the  varied  works,  however,  there  runs  the 
same  spirit,  the  same  individuality,  sometimes  almost  hidden,  some- 
times breaking  out  in  a  new  form,  a  spirit  delighting  in  the  external 
aspect  of  things,  with  all  their  infinite  variations,  and  also  in  all  the 
cleverness  and  skill  of  craftsmanship. 

This  accounts  for  his  variety  of  subject;  everything  seen  makes 
its  appeal,  —  the  clouds  drifting  over  the  sand-dunes,  the  children  at 
play,  the  pots  and  pans  and  old  stuffs  of  the  studio,  anything  that  the 
eye  can  see  the  hand  can  render  with  a  dexterity  that  is  a  joy  of  itself ; 
but,  as  with  Whistler  or  even  more  than  in  his  case,  the  object  must 
be  before  the  eye.  The  interest  is  not  in  general  types  but  in  those 
subtle  and  momentary  differences  of  appearance  which  no  mind  could 
retain  or  divine.  This  would  explain  why  Chase  has  not  attempted 
decorative  painting  (if  his  activity  in  the  other  branches  were  not  a 
sufficient  explanation),  and  also  account  for  a  certain  externality  in 
some  of  his  work  as  a  portrait  painter  ;  for  though  many  of  his  por- 
traits are  excellent,  there  are  others  where  he  seems  to  have  treated 
his  sitters  as  bits  of  still-life  to  be  brilliantly  reproduced,  but  with  no 
more  attachment  to  their  personalities  than  if  they  were  brass  pots  or 
Kennebec  salmon.  But  this  is  only  to  say  that  he  has  the  defects  of 
his  qualities.  Among  our  painters  there  is  no  other  who  is  so  purely 
a  painter.  He  delights  in  the  technical  exercise  of  his  art,  and  it  is 
in  this  direction  that  he  has  influenced  his  many  pupils.  They  have 
been  taught  to  use  paint  with  freedom  which  has  probably  been  an 
excellent  addition  to  the  ordinary  instruction  conducted,  as  at  Paris, 
mainly  on  a  basis  of  drawing. 

The  Munich  methods  were  the  most  strikingly  novel  among 
those  displayed  by  the  returning  students.  They  may  be  said  to 
have  dominated  the  early  exhibitions  of  the  Society  of  American 
Artists.  They  even  created  more  interest  than  the  French  work, 
which  was  the  next  most  important  factor.  Between  these  two 
clearly  divided  groups  there  were  all  degrees  of  difference.  The 
men  who  had  studied  in  Belgium  or  Holland  stood  as  far  as  train- 


FIG.  83.  — FULLER:    NVDIA,    METROPOLITAN    MUSEUM. 


THE   SOCIETY   OF   AMERICAN    ARTISTS  387 

ing  went  about  midway.  They  liacl  no  reckless  dashing  brush  work, 
their  draftsmanship  was  accurate,  even  lal^oriously  so;  but  their 
shadows  were  warm  and  brown,  and  they  took  more  pleasure  in 
texture  and  surfaces  than  the  austerity  of  the  French  training 
usually  permitted.  It  was,  in  fact,  sound  academic  training,  with  no 
very  distinguishing  local  characteristic.  Much  the  same  might  have 
been  given  by  the  more  conservative  of  the  Munich  professors,  and 
though  his  own  work  had  a  special  dexterity  and  firmness.  Couture  s 
teaching  had  been  practically  the  same ;  but  in  Munich  and  Paris 
there  were  enthusiasms  and  innovations  in  the  art  atmosphere  which 
carried  the  pupil  beyond  the  instructions  of  the  schools.  Probably 
Antwerp  was  the  most  patronized  of  any  of  the  intermediary  places ; 
but  the  American  student  was  unsettled  in  his  search  for  knowledge, 
wandering  from  one  school  to  another.  Percival  De  Luce,  who  was 
perhaps  the  first  American  to  work  at  Antwerp,  went  afterward  to 
Brussels  and  finally  to  the  Atelier  Bonnat  in  Paris,  while  Robert  C. 
Minor  left  Paris  and  Diaz  for  Antwerp.  Bunce  even  studied  at 
Dijsseldorf  (he  was  a  little  older  than  the  other  men) ;  but  if  he  was 
influenced  by  any  master,  it  must  have  been  by  Clays  in  Brussels. 
Maynard  and  Francis  D.  Millet  remained  faithful  to  Antwerp  during 
their  student  years,  and  their  workmanship  testifies  to  the  thorough- 
ness of  the  training  in  the  Academy  there. 

There  was  no  such  sureness  nor  unity  of  work  among  the 
original  members  of  the  Society  of  American  Artists  who  studied 
at  Paris,  and  yet  the  proportion  of  them  and  of  the  other  Paris 
students  of  the  seventies  and  eighties  that  have  developed  and 
continued  to  work  as  established  artists  of  repute  is  notably  larger 
than  among  the  Munich  men.  This  very  continuance  of  produc- 
tion, with  the  development  and  alteration  of  their  styles,  keeps 
their  careers  from  being  history  as  yet,  and  their  very  merit  relegates 
them  to  a  later  and  briefer  notice.  Of  the  foundation  members 
themselves  William  Sartain  might  almost  seem  to  belong  to  the 
earlier  American  school.  To  be  sure,  he  studied  under  Yvon  and 
Bonnat  and  at  the  Ecole  des  Beaux  Arts,  but  he  was  the  son  of  John 
Sartain  the  engraver,  long  a  venerable  figure  in  the  art  life  of  Phila- 
delphia and  New  York  and  who  vied  with  James  Smillie  in  reproduc- 
ing for  art  books  and  annuals  the  works  of  the  older  men.    The  son, 


388  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

too,  travelled  in  Europe  and  Algeria,  like  Col  man  and  the  Giffords, 
and  his  canvases  like  theirs  are  executed  without  any  special  brill- 
iancy of  handling ;  but  there  is  in  Sartain's  work  a  delicacy  of  tone  in 
the  simple  masses  not  striking  at  first,  but  whose  absolute  justness 
is  recognized  on  longer  acquaintance.  Some  of  his  Moorish  street 
scenes  have  a  depth  of  luminous  atmosphere  enveloping  the  little 
figures  in  a  way  comparable  to  that  of   Pieter  de   Hooge. 

Wyatt  Eaton  was  another  of  the  P^rench  contingent  who,  though 
born  on  the  Canadian  eiid  of  Lake  Cham})lain,  may  yet  be  fairly 
claimed  as  an  "  American,"  for  his  parents  were  there  only  tempo- 
rarily and  he  came  early  to  New  York  and  studied  in  the  National 
Academy  schools  before  going  abroad.  There  he  worked  under 
Gerome,  made  the  acquaintance  of  Millet,  and  lived  for  a  while  near 
him  at  Barbizon  and  even  found  room  for  admiration  of  the  rising 
star  of  Bastien-Le  Page,  but  none  of  these  is  copied  in  his  works 
if  exception  be  made  of  his  "  Hay  Makers,"  which  was  a  sort  of 
combination  of  Millet  and  Bastien,  and  a  not  very  successful  attempt 
to  do  something  strong.  His  characteristic  note  was  not  strength, 
but  rather  delicacy  of  feeling :  feeling  for  tone  and  color  in  his 
"  Reflection,"  feeling  for  grace  in  his  little  classic  figures,  feeling 
for  character  in  the  crayon  heads  that  he  did  of  Emerson  and 
Holmes  and  Whittier  and  others.  The  feeling  was  sincere  and 
personal  and  has  made  his  work  last  well,  so  that  the  few  things 
done  before  his  early  death   are  more   appreciated  now  than  ever. 

This  same  refinement  of  perception,  but  of  a  robuster  type,  was 
characteristic  of  J.  Alden  Weir,  like  Eaton,  a  pujDil  of  Gerome,  but 
who  was  far  from  imitating  his  master's  style,  even  further  from  it  than 
P^aton.  Weir  had  a  more  vigorous  handling;  less  feeling  for  classic 
grace  of  form  and  more  for  subtle  harmonies  of  color,  but  there 
is  yet  a  certain  unity  in  the  point  of  view  of  both.  Weir's  style 
has  developed  and  had  its  phases,  but  the  "  Green  Bodice  "  has  a 
clear  relationship  to  the  earlier  "Reflection."  Weir,  however, 
though  he  was  a  friend  of  Bastien-Le  Page  and  an  admirer  of 
Millet,  has  yet  been  more  influenced  by  Manet  and  Monet  (or  rather 
by  the  spirit  of  the  time  of  which  they  were  manifestations),  trying 
their  methods  and  adapting  them  to  .American  ]:)ortraiture  and 
landscape.     He  belongs  really  among  our  impressionists,  men  like 


THE   SOCIETY   OF   AMERICAN   ARTISTS  389 

Twachtman  or  Massam,  and  is  one  of  the  ablest  and  most  original 
of  the  group,  with  a  peculiar  feeling  for  delicate  browns  and  grays 
and  silvery  tones.  He  has  gained  strength  steadily  so  that  now  his 
canvases  are  complete  and  harmonious,  with  no  trace  of  effort  in 
their  execution.  Each  has  its  own  particular  character  of  beauty  or 
picturesqueness.  He  has  simplified  the  masses  in  his  portraits,  com- 
posing them  almost  in  flat  spots  and  with  delicate  and  unusual 
groupings  and  color  schemes.  In  the  same  way  he  has  transcribed 
our  landscape,  surrounding  it  with  an  enveloping  atmosphere  and 
working  its  roughness  and  unkemptness  into  patterns  of  delicate, 
decorative  quality. 

Like  Weir  working  at  the  Beaux  Arts  under  Gerome  and 
visiting  Barbizon  with  Eaton  was  Will  H.  Low,  but  the  distinguish- 
ing character  of  his  Paris  work  came  from  neither  of  these  frequen- 
tations,  but  from  the  atelier  of  Carolus-Duran.  The  broad  unctuous 
brush  work  of  the  master  can  be  clearly  traced  in  the  "  Portrait  of 
Madame  Albani,"  and  especially  in  the  "  Lady  of  the  Empire,"  but 
this  was  but  a  passing  phase.  Already  in  Barbizon  he  had  started 
a  "  Jour  des  Morts,"  and  soon  after  his  return  he  began  to  paint 
figure  pictures  with  the  light  tones  of  the  open-air  school,  which 
were  then  a  novelty.  They  were  at  first  taken  from  our  own 
country  life  and  infused  with  a  delicate  sentiment  or  pathos  wiiich 
culminated  in  an  ambitious  illustration  of  "  Skipper  Ireson's  Ride," 
after  WMiittier's  poem  ;  but  soon  Chloes  and  Daphnes  began  to 
replace  the  New  England  maidens,  and  sunbonnets  and  gingham 
dresses  gave  way  to  antique  draperies.  The  classical  traditions  of 
French  art  appealed  to  Low;  and  though  he  used  modern  formulas, 
his  constant  struggle  was  to  express  something  of  the  grace  of 
their  line  and  balanced  composition.  His  first  considerable  success 
was  his  illustration  of  Keats's  Lamia,  and  his  later  development  in 
painting  and  in  decoration  has  been  in  this  direction. 

These  three  men  represent  fairly  well  the  variety  and  quality 
of  the  results  of  French  training  at  this  time.  They  have  been 
mentioned  here  for  the  purely  arbitrary  reason  that  they  were 
among  the  founders  of  the  Society.  During  the  next  four  or  five 
years  other  students  returned  from  Paris  by  dozens  and  scores, 
making  individual  mention  impossible.     From  England  there  came 


390  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

very  few.  The  schools  there  were  not  calculated  to  tempt  the 
stranger,  and  many  of  the  English  went  to  Paris  to  learn  their 
trade.  Almost  the  only  one  of  the  early  members  of  the  Society 
of  American  Artists  with  English  training  was  Francis  Lathrop, 
who  had  studied  as  a  boy  under  Farrer  in  New  York  and  later 
at  the  Dresden  Academy,  and  who,  just  as  he  came  of  age,  went 
from  there  to  London,  Whistler  having  invited  him  and  promised 
to  teach  him  more  than  all  the  art  schools  could. 

The  counsels  of  Whistler  were  admirable  but  rather  unsystematic, 
and  so  he  procured  a  place  for  Lathrop  in  the  studio  of  Madox 
Brown,  who  had  a  young  friend  of  about  the  same  age  as  a  student. 
There  Lathrop  met  the  Pre-Raphaelite  circle,  including  Morris  and 
Burne-Jones,  and  knew  them  more  or  less  intimately.  It  was  an 
unusual  experience  for  an  American  student  at  the  time.  If  the 
ordinarv  school  training  often  diminished  imagination  and  feeling 
while  insisting  on  the  mechanical  side  of  art,  association  with  the 
followers  of  Rossetti  was  likely  to  err  on  the  other  side.  But  imagi- 
nation and  feeling  are  so  rare  that  something  may  well  be  risked  for 
their  sake.  His  English  training  shows  in  Lathrop's  portraits  and 
ideal  heads,  but  especially  in  the  decorative  work  which  soon  took 
up  a  large  share  of  his  energies  and  which,  though  influenced  by 
American  needs  and  by  collaboration  with  La  Farge,  is  still  related 
to  the  English  decorative  school  of  Burne-Jones  and  Morris  as  very 
little  of  the  other  work  done  here  is. 

The  remaining  three  painters  from  among  the  founders  received 
what  was  practically  an  American  training,  though  all  visited  Europe 
and  have  been  profoundly  though  indirectly  influenced  by  certain 
moods  of  European  art.  Helena  De  Kay  (now  Mrs.  R.  W.  Gilder) 
showed  a  charming  feeling  for  subtle  color  in  her  ideal  heads  and 
especially  in  her  flower  studies ;  but  after  a  few  years  she  gave  up 
her  career  as  an  artist  and  ceased  to  exhibit.  I'he  other  two  (Fuller 
and  Ryder)  count  among  the  most  original  and  important  of  our 
native  painters.  Their  place  is  with  the  landscape  group  that  had 
Inness  at  its  head,  but  they  manifested  themselves  later. 

This  is  true  of  George  Fuller,  although,  as  far  as  age  went,  he 
was  an  older  man  than  Inness,  having  been  born  in  1822,  but  his 
career  was  a  curious  one.     He  began,  like  so  many  others,  as  an 


THE   SOCIETY   OF   AMERICAN    ARTISTS  393 

itinerant  painter,  making  likenesses  for  a  few  dollars  each,  and  after 
some  study  in  Boston  and  New  York  succeeded  in  painting  portraits 
and  landscapes  in  a  way  not  greatly  differing  from  the  average  work 
of  the  time.  He  was  made  an  associate  of  the  Academy  of  Design 
in  1857,  but  his  painting  was  unremunerative.  It  might  have  sufficed 
for  his  own  wants,  but  in  1859  his  brother  and  father  died,  and  it 
seemed  to  him  his  duty  to  take  the  old  mortgaged  farm  in  his  native 
Deerfield  and  try  to  win  from  it  a  livelihood  for  the  family.  He  did 
not  give  up  his  painting,  but  no  longer  tried  to  sell  his  pictures, 
working  only  for  his  own  amusement  and  solace.  He  labored  at 
his  canvases  as  his  mood  moved  him,  drawing  them  into  more  per- 
fect harmony.  At  length  when,  after  nearly  a  score  of  years,  he 
began  to  show  his  pictures  once  more,  they  bore  no  relation  to  his 
previous  careful,  prosaic  work.  They  were  filled  with  a  brown  envel- 
oping mist  that  swallowed  up  the  figures  and  dulled  their  outlines  ; 
there  was  little  positive  color,  there  was  little  positive  form,  and  what 
there  was  was  not  absolutely  accurate.  They  were  what  many  men 
could  very  nearly  do  by  messing  over  old  canvases. 

But  in  painting  it  is  just  such  slight  differences  that  distin- 
guish between  good  and  bad,  and  Fuller  was  no  ordinary  man. 
His  heart  was  sound,  his  mind  was  clear,  and  his  taste  was  sure. 
He  had  been  trusted  and  loved  by  his  fellow- workers  in  the  early 
days,  and  had  the  strength  of  character  which  enabled  him  to  develop 
in  solitude.  Just  before  he  went  back  to  the  farm,  as  if  to  pay 
him  for  his  renunciation,  he  made  a  six  months'  trip  through 
Europe,  visiting  all  the  great  galleries  and  admiring  the  master- 
pieces. In  the  long  years  afterward  the  memory  of  them  must 
have  been  an  enormous  refining  influence.  There  are  delicate 
but  sure  variations  of  color  in  his  landscapes,  there  is  individual 
charm  in  his  ideal  heads,  and  in  both  there  is  the  feeling,  subtle, 
intangible,  of  poetry  and  mystery.  When  in  1876  the  failure  to 
make  farming  pay  forced  him  to  send  a  dozen  of  his  pictures  to  a 
Boston  dealer,  their  success  was  instantaneous,  and  for  the  remain- 
ing eight  years  of  his  life  he  had  purchasers  for  whatever  he  did. 
It  cannot  be  maintained  that  all  of  his  works  are  on  the  same 
level,  but  the  best  of  them,  like  the  "  Turkey  Pasture,"  "  She  was 
a  Witch,"  or  the  "  Winifred    Dysart,"  are  of    the  greatest   distinc- 


394  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

tion ;  the  latter  especially,  like  the  best  of  his  ideal  heads,  making  a 
peculiar  j^ersonal  appeal,  like  some  of  the  portraits  of  Gainsborough. 

If  the  work  of  Fuller  is  better  judged  by  the  emotion  it  produces 
than  by  more  literal  and  prosaic  tests,  that  of  Albert  P.  Ryder  has 
even  more  need  of  such  leniency.  Its  strangeness  is  greater.  It 
not  only  does  not  respond  to  the  usual  technical  standards,  but  it 
sets  up  others  of  its  own.  It  will  not  do  to  say  that  it  is  not  lit- 
eral, not  exact ;  for  it  is  very  varied,  and  there  are  bits  of  still-life  or 
landscape  that  are  as  minutely  truthful  as  any  one  need  desire  ;  but  in 
general,  nature  is  seen  through  his  temperament  and  much  altered  in 
the  process.  More  than  Fuller,  he  is  a  seer  of  visions  and  even  less 
bound  by  literal  fact.  For  Fuller  saw  with  poetic  insight  the  world 
about  him,  softening  or  obliterating  prosaic  details ;  but  Ryder  con- 
structs a  world  of  his  own,  niysterious  and  often  illogical,  with  all  the 
vividness  and  incoherence  of  a  dream.  He  belongs  with  men  like 
Monticelli  and  Blake,  whose  faults  are  manifest  to  the  most  casual 
and  obtuse  critic,  but  whose  fascination  is  felt  only  by  the  peculiarly 
receptive. 

This  effect  is  heightened  in  Ryder's  works  by  his  execution,  by 
his  manipulation  of  paint  and  varnish  as  substances  capable  of  being 
made  beautiful  in  themselves,  as  w^ell  as  in  pattern  and  color.  Some 
of  them  suggest  the  lacquer  work  of  Korin,  as  when  a  red  stag  flees 
through  dark  depths  of  varnish  beneath  a  streak  of  yellow  sky,  or 
patches  of  silvery,  moon-lit  cloud  spot  against  the  deep  blue  behind  a 
brown  tree.  The  "Flying  Dutchman"  is  a  swirl  of  delicately  matched 
old  ivory  and  violet  grays,  and  most  of  his  pictures  are,  as  Whistler 
insisted  pictures  should  be,  beautiful  simply  as  patterns  in  delicately 
graded  colors  and  tones.  But  Ryder's  pictures  differ  from  Whistler's 
as  well  as  from  Fuller's  in  being  not  transcriptions  from  nature,  but 
creations  of  the  imagination,  and  in  striving  to  convey  ideas,  vague 
but  poetic.  As  in  the  case  of  Monticelli,  with  whom  he  has  the 
closest  affinity,  his  worst  is  very  bad  ;  but  his  best,  to  those  to  whom 
his  symbols  appeal,  give  a  delight  unlike  that  from  any  other  source. 

Of  such  varying  elements  as  these  the  Society  of  American 
Artists  was  at  first  composed ;  but  although  it  never  became  so 
homogeneous  a  body  as  the  old  Academy  of  the  sixties,  yet  as  time 
went  on  the  differences  became  less  than  at  first.    Some  of  the  older 


THE   SOCIETY   OF   AMERICAN   ARTISTS  395 

men  tliOLight  they  were  treated  witli  scant  courtesy  and  soon  resigned, 
there  were  fewer  men  who  had  received  an  exclusively  American 
training,  the  Munich  school  lost  its  vogue,  and  the  great  bulk  of 
the  new  members  had  passed  through  the  French  ateliers,  even 
those  who  had  worked  in  Germany  or  elsewhere  usually  making 
some  sort  of  a  stop  at  Paris ;  so  that  in  a  dozen  years  when  the 
membership  had  increased  to  a  hundred,  there  were  very  few  who 
did  not  owe  allegiance  of  some  sort  to  French  masters. 

About  this  time  the  Society  had  become  a  firmly  established  insti- 
tution, and  a  permanent  home  of  some  kind  was  a  necessity,  but  the 
difficulties  in  the  way  of  obtaining  it  were  great.  The  Society  was  not 
at  all  a  social  institution,  and  the  members  were  bound  together  but 
loosely.  Its  sole  function  was  to  hold  an  exhibition  once  a  year,  and 
there  were  none  of  those  informal  reunions  wiiich  in  the  early  days 
of  the  Academy  united  the  artists  and  amateurs,  and  made  a  portion 
of  the  solid  business  men  of  the  city  friendly  to  the  institution  and 
willing  to  subscribe  to  its  funds.  On  the  contrary,  this  same  loyalty 
to  the  old  Academicians  was  a  detriment  to  the  members  of  the 
Society  who  were  regarded  as  interlopers,  and  some  few  of  whom 
even  disquieted  the  minds  of  serious  people  by  certain  remnants 
of  studio  manners  and  of  Parisian  peculiarities  in  costume.  It 
was  consequently  not  easy  to  raise  money ;  but  the  Art  Students' 
League,  an  independent  school  run  by  its  own  members,  needed 
working  quarters  and  the  newly  organized  Architectural  League, 
exhibition  galleries,  so  that  a  combination  was  made  with  them. 
Between  fifty  and  a  hundred  thousand  dollars  were  raised  by  sub- 
scriptions and  fellowships,  fifty  thousand  more  was  paid  by  the 
three  societies  and  their  friends  for  stock  in  a  new  company,  —  the 
American  Fine  Arts  Society,  which  was  to  erect  a  building  afford- 
ing accommodation  to  the  three  constituting  societies  and  to  be 
governed  by  trustees  elected  by  them.  With  this  narrow  margin, 
(not  much  over  a  hundred  thousand  dollars),  land  was  bought  on 
Fifty-seventh  Street,  running  through  to  Fifty-eighth,  and  a  building 
started.  The  planning  and  management  of  the  affair  was  mainly 
due  to  Howard  Russell  Butler,  who  triumphantly  refuted  the  idea 
that  business  capacity  is  incompatible  with  the  practice  of  paint- 
ing.    Even  as  it  was,  there  came  a  time  when  failure  threatened,  but 


396  HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

the  situation  was  explained  to  George  \V.  Vanderbilt,  who  bought 
in  the  Fifty-eighth  Street  front  witli  tlie  understanding  that  he  was 
to  resell  to  the  Society  when  it  got  sufficient  funds.  Instead  of  this, 
however,  he  erected  tlic  \"andcrbilt  Gallery  and  presented  land  and 
building  to  the  Society,  a  gift  nearly  equal  in  value  to  its  original 
resources.  The  completed  structure  was  opened  in  December  of 
1 89 2,  with  a  special  retrospective  exhibition  of  the  best  works  shown 
previously,  and  the  Society  took  its  place  as  a  settled  institution. 


CHAPTER   XXI 

AMERICAN    PAINTERS   LIVING    IN   EUROPE 
Difficulties  of   Young  Painters  on  their    Return  from   Europe.  —  Those   that 

REMAINED    THERE.  —  McEWEN.  —  PeARCE.  —  RiDGEWAY    KnIGHT.  —  WALTER    GaY.  — 

Stewart.  —  Mrs.  MacMonnies.  —  MacMonnies.  —  Dannat.  —  Julian  Story.  — 
George  Hitchcock.  —  Gari  Melchers.  —  Weeks.  —  Theriat.  —  Bridgman.  — 
Alexander  Harrison.  —  Mary  Cassatt.  —  The  Drawbacks  of  Residence  in 
France.  —  The   Latest   Men.  —  Tanner.  —  Van   der   Weyden.  —  Fromuth.  — 

KOOPMANS.  —  MauRER 

In  the  years  following  the  foundation  of  the  Society  of  American 
Artists,  American  painting  becomes  more  and  more  a  part  of  imme- 
diate contemporary  life  and  less  and  less  a  matter  for  history.  Its 
achievements  are  so  recent  and  so  complex  that  the  perspective 
is  lacking  for  definitive  judgment,  and  little  more  can  be  done  than 
to  attempt  some  generalities  on  its  dominant  characteristics  and 
to  notice  in  some  way  the  schools  or  personalities  that  have 
influenced  it,  without  pretending  to  make  accurate  or  final  decisions 
on  their  relative  importance.  The  natural  method  is  to  treat  of 
each  of  the  branches  of  art,  figure,  portrait,  landscape,  and  the  rest 
by  itself,  and  show  how  it  stands  related  to  the  others  and  to  the 
main  body;  but  at  once  an  initial  difficulty  arises,  —  the  painters  as 
a  rule  have  confined  themselves  to  no  special  line,  but  have  tried 
all  things  from  illustration  to  mural  decoration  and  from  landscape 
to  miniature.  Their  work  does  not  at  first  follow  the  old  accepted 
divisions,  for  the  French  studios  qualified  their  followers  to  paint 
anything  that  they  saw,  with  the  same  facility  and  in  the  same  way  ; 
though  with  time  the  young  painter,  after  incursions  into  various 
realms,  usually  found  his  own  province  and  settled  permanently 
within  its  borders. 

These  studios  at  the  time  of  the  influx  of  Americans  had  under- 
gone a  change  from  the  old  traditions.  Painting,  owing  to  the 
great  demand  for  French  pictures  not  only  from  America  but  from 
England  and  Germany  as  well,  had  become  a  profitable  and  honored 

397 


398  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

trade,  and  there  was  a  great  rush  of  youths  of  all  sorts  to  learn  the 
desirable  art.  Previously  pupils  had  been  received  into  studios  in 
a  sort  of  patriarchal  fashion  after  introduction  by  some  friend  of  the 
family,  or  else  the  beginner  sought  out  a  painter  whom  he  admired 
and  asked  to  be  received  as  a  pupil.  It  was  always  considered 
a  favor.  The  master  as  a  rule  accepted  no  payment  but  exercised 
despotic  authority  and  expected  implicit  obedience.  The  pupils 
were  no  more  in  number  than  he  could  know  intimately,  and  it  was 
quite  within  his  office  to  criticise,  if  he  saw  fit,  their  morals,  their 
literary  taste,  or  their  politics,  and  in  matters  concerning  art  his 
word  was  not  to  be  questioned  —  the  subjects  to  be  painted,  the 
preparation  of  the  canvas,  the  handling,  must  all  conform  to  the 
traditions  of   the   atelier. 

When  the  great  influx  of  pupils  came,  it  swamped  these  old 
schools.  Even  the  government  ateliers  of  the  Ecole  des  Beaux 
Arts,  which  were  conducted  in  much  the  same  way  and  where 
admission  was  not  easy,  were  crowded  beyond  their  capacity,  and 
to  accommodate  the  overflow  there  sprang  up  a  new  class  of  acad- 
emies which  charged  definite  fees  for  instruction  and  where  any 
one  could  enter  without  introduction  and  usually  without  any  proof 
of  his  capacity.  Some  of  these  were  started  by  artists,  some  by 
managers  who  engaged  the  artists  and  undertook  the  responsi- 
bilities of  the  enterprise.  The  financial  arrangement  was  like  that 
of  any  drawing  school,  but  the  men  who  went  to  the  academies 
intended  to  make  painting  the  occupation  of  their  lives  and  de- 
manded the  very  best  instruction,  and  in  fact  among  the  professors 
were  the  most  distinguished  of  French  painters. 

The  numbers  that  flocked  to  these  schools,  however,  were  so  great 
that  anything  like  the  old  personal  care  was  impossible.  The  Carolus- 
Duran  atelier  was  almost  the  only  one  that  held  to  the  old  personal 
relations.  In  the  others,  classes  of  over  a  hundred  were  common, 
and  in  some  cases  a  single  man  had  more  than  two  hundred  pupils. 
The  system  of  instruction  had  to  be  simplified  and  concentrated  so 
that  it  could  be  applied  in  the  minute  or  two  twice  a  week,  which  was 
all  the  time  that  the  "  Professor  "  (which  the  "  Master  "  of  earlier  days 
had  become)  could  devote  to  each  pupil.  This  reduced  the  course 
practically   to    drawing   from  the   nude    figure.     The  study  of   the 


AMERICAN    PAINTERS    IN    EUROPE  401 

antique  was  practised  only  long  enough  to  gain  admission  to  the  life 
class,  and  even  for  that  casts  from  life  tended  to  supplant  those  from 
classical  masterpieces.  The  professors  were  members  of  the  Insti- 
tute, steeped  in  the  cult  of  the  grand  style  with  its  repose,  dignity, 
and  calm  beauty;  but  in  their  hurried  intercourse  they  could  not 
inspire  like  views  in  the  great  mass  of  their  pupils,  who  often  while 
accepting  their  instruction  reviled  their  ideals  as  antiquated.  While 
a  few  remained  true  to  the  classical  tradition,  the  trend  was  all 
toward  naturalism.  The  movement  had  been  started  by  Courbet 
and  Manet,  but  these  had  been  above  all  painters,  and  no  such 
brush  work  was  to  be  taught  in  the  schools.  A  more  popular  and 
more  readily  imitated  leader  was  Bastien-Le  Page,  whose  minute  and 
accurate  draftsmanship  appealed  to  students  struggling  to  do  the 
same  and  whose  gray,  open-air  coloring  was  an  innovation.  Monet's 
sunlight  and  mist  effects  were  hardly  adaptable  to  the  school  study 
of  the  models  though  some  attempted  them,  and  Puvis  de  Chavannes' 
Pantheon  decoration  had  enthusiastic  followers. 

The  American  students  were  moved  by  the  same  enthusiasm 
as  their  fellows,  and  their  work  was  undistinguishable  from  that 
which  was  done  around  them.  Like  the  others,  when  they  had 
gained  sufficient  skill  they  took  studios  of  their  own  and  there 
produced  a  portrait,  a  study  of  the  nude  or  a  group,  and  sent  it  off 
to  the  Salon,  where  it  was  much  discussed  by  their  fellow-students 
and  possibly  noticed  by  the  critics  or  honored  by  a  "  mention."  At 
about  this  point  in  his  career  the  average  American  had  to  return. 
He  left  the  most  beautiful  city  in  the  world,  where  art  and  artists 
were  glorified ;  he  left  the  old  atelier  crowd,  so  sympathetic  and 
amusing,  and  the  easy  student  life,  without  restraints  or  duties,  and 
he  came  home  to  an  unsympathetic  land,  indifferent  to  his  work, 
where  life  seemed  colorless  and  filled  with  all  manner  of  irksome 
obligations.  The  Salon  picture  on  which  he  was  to  found  his  fame 
received  no  attention  or  else  was  criticised  in  a  manner  so  unintel- 
ligent that  praise  was  even  more  maddening  than  abuse.  The 
pursuit  of  his  art  was  hedged  with  petty  annoyances.  Models  and 
costumes  were  hard  to  find,  studios  were  scarce  and  absurdly  dear, 
and,  worst  of  all,  it  was  commonly  at  this  inopportune  moment  that 
his  friends  expected  him  to  become  self-supporting.     This  sudden 


402 


HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 


deprivation  of  the  art-fostering  atmosphere  of  Paris  was  in  some 
ways  regrettable.  Many  of  the  men  were  forced  to  leave  with  their 
training  incomplete,  others,  and  those  among  the  better  ones,  needed 
the  discipline  of  a  public  criticism  severe  but  intelligent.  Too 
manv  men,  satisfied  w  ilh  a  bit  of  charming,  subtle  color  or  drawing. 


liG.   86.  —  Dan  NAT  :    QuAKii.ni.,  .Mi.ii.' 'i  .'i.i  ian  Museum. 

left  the  rest  of  the  canvas  in  a  shape  which  they  would  hardly  have 
dared  to  present  to  a  Parisian  Salon  jury. 

A  certain  proportion  of  the  students,  however,  small  as  com- 
pared with  the  whole  number  but  yet  sufficiently  numerous  when 
taken  by  itself,  was  spared  this  untimely  return.  They  were  enabled 
thus  not  only  to   acquire    but  also   to  practise   their  art   under  the 


AMERICAN    PAINTERS   IN    EUROPE 


403 


guidance  of  their  masters  and  in  the  surroundings  in  which  it  was 
formed.  Their  development  has  been  unbroken  and  they  have 
become  admirable  workmen,  exhibiting  regularly  in  the  great  Euro- 
pean Salons,  winning  medals  and  decorations  for  themselves  and 
much  credit  for  their  country.  Their  names  are  honored  in  all  the 
art  magazines,  and  photographs  of  their  pictures  are  in  all  the  shop 
windows  from  Constantinople  to  Lisbon. 

The  artists  living  in  America  seldom  sent  their  works  abroad  for 
exhibition  ;  it  was  expensive  and  difficult  to  do  so,  and  there  was 
nothing  to  be  gained  by  it.  Even  if  successful,  foreign  praise  and 
honors  were  useless  to  them.  They  neither  increased  the  price  of 
the  pictures  nor  the  standing  of  the  painters ;  besides,  apart  from 
other  reasons,  the  small  size  of  the  canvases,  made  as  a  rule  for  private 
houses,  rendered  them  unfit  for  display  in  the  great  exhibition  halls. 
It  was  natural,  therefore,  that  the  work  of  the  expatriates  should  have 
represented  to  foreign  critics  the  sum  total  of  American  art  and 
equally  natural  that  they  should  have  declared  that  it  was  only  a 
branch  or  a  copy  of  the  art  of  France.  This  reproach  (if  it  be  one) 
cannot  be  well  denied,  but  it  applies  equally  to  much  of  the  best 
European  art  and  even  to  some  of  the  best  British  work. 

For  the  past  thirty  years  Paris  has  been  the  art-school  of  the 
world,  and  a  multitude  of  painters  have  studied  there  or — what  is 
much  more  important  —  have  worked  with  the  requirements  and 
standards  of  the  French  Salons  in  their  minds.  Many  Germans  and 
Belgians  and  Italians  and  Spanish  canvases  have  mingled  there  with 
the  native  product,  and  for  the  most  part  have  been  indistinguishable 
from  it,  —  the  Americans  perhaps  even  more  indistinguishable  than 
the  others,  for  their  long  distance  from  their  home  and  the  generally 
received  conviction  of  the  unpicturesqueness  of  their  country  pre- 
vented them  from  painting  any  subjects  which  might  betray  their 
nationality.  The  nationality  may  be  traced  here  and  there,  however, 
by  a  careful  observer,  not  in  the  workmanship  or  the  subject  but  in 
the  point  of  view,  in  the  temperament  of  the  painter.  They  have 
none  of  them  become  French,  they  all  belong  to  some  branch  of 
the  American  colony.  A  few  have  become  Parisians,  which  is  a 
veiy  different  thing  from  becoming  French,  but  as  a  rule  there 
has    been    surprisingly  little    assimilation.      They   have    their    own 


404  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAIN'i'IXG 

alien  ideas  on  manners  and  morals,  and  these  affect  their  works. 
For  instance,  take  a  well-known  picture,  and  one  that  seems  at 
first  glance  peculiarly  French  —  the  "Hunt  Ball"  by  Julius  L. 
Stewart,  What  French  painter  would  catch  just  the  spirit  of 
frank  enjoyment  of  the  young  girls  without  a  trace  of  either 
shyness  or  coquetry?  Or,  again,  what  French  painter,  at  the  time 
that  it  was  executed,  would  have  conceived  an  "  Arcadia  "  so  free 
from  school  traditions,  so  frankly  naturalistic,  as  that  of  Alexander 
Harrison  ? 

But  at  best  these  traces  are  slight  and  often  undiscoverable. 
The  American  Salon  painters  are  above  all  Salon  painters  and 
of  a  high  average  merit.  The  portraits  and  Dutch  pictures 
of  McEwen,  the  figures  in  old  costumes  of  Pearce,  the  peasant 
girls  of  Ridgeway  Knight,  the  scenes  from  humble  life  by  Walter 
Gay,  are  all  excellent  of  their  kind,  well  drawn  and  well  painted. 
A  special  word  should  be  given  to  some  of  the  later  work  of  Gay, 
bits  of  old  eighteenth-century  rooms,  with  their  polished  floors, 
their  gilded  woodwork,  tarnished  mirrors,  and  old  porcelain.  The 
touch  is  brilliant  and  sure,  the  coloring  very  delicate  and  true, 
and  the  sentiment  of  inanimate  things  exquisitely  given.  No 
figures  are  introduced,  but  the  spirits  of  an  earlier  time  are  felt  to 
haunt  the  places.  Modern  elegance  as  displayed  in  the  life  of  the 
American  colony  in  France  is  given  in  a  series  of  pictures  by 
Stewart,  such  as  the  "  Hunt  Ball"  already  referred  to,  while  another 
side  of  his  talent  is  shown  in  a  series  of  studies  of  nudes  in  the  open 
air,  lighted  by  reflected  sunlight. 

These  subjects  do  not  in  the  least  exhaust  the  productions  of  the 
artists,  but  are  simply  the  ones  which  occur  as  most  characteristic 
of  each.  All  have  jDainted  portraits  and  landscape  and  many  other 
things.  Like  Stewart,  Mrs.  MacMonnies  has  painted  nudes  in  the 
open  air  with  something  of  the  charm  of  the  old  bric-a-brac  of  Gay, 
but  more  frequently  groups  of  modern  figures  in  the  sunny  paths  of 
her  garden  at  Giverny.  MacMonnies  himself  has  latterly  deserted 
sculpture  for  the  sister  art  and  has  produced  work  so  amazing  in  its 
boldness  and  breadth  that  it  seems  incredible  that  it  should  be  the 
work  of  a  beginner.  There  is  no  sign  of  weakness  or  uncertainty  in 
the  execution,  and  the  lack  of  the  customary  long  apprenticeship  to 


11  (J.  Sj.  —  MELCHERS  :     PORTRAIT. 


AMERICAN    PAINTERS   IN    EUROPE  407 

the  craft  shows  itself,  if  at  all,  in  a  certain  superficiality  and  lack  of 
nobility  (to  put  it  mildly)  in  the  conception.  Such  skill,  applied  to 
ends  so  trivial,  creates  a  feeling  of  repulsion  and  drew  from  one 
critic  of  the  MacMonnies  paintings,  when  they  were  shown  in  New 
York,  the  remark  that  probably  no  painter  in  America  was  able 
to  do  such  work,  and  certainly  none  would  be  willing  to.  This 
unpleasant  view-point  is  probably  due  to  the  exigencies  of  the  Salon 
exhibitions,  which  demand  that  pictures  shall  be  aggressive  if  they 
would  be  noticed,  for  some  of  the  portraits  painted  during  his  visit 
in  America  were  dignified  and  quiet. 

Another  man  excelling  in  pure  painting  is  William  T.  Dannat, 
whose  early  work  showed  clearly  his  training  in  Munich  and  under 
Munkacsy.  One  of  his  first  works,  the  "  Quartette,"  now  in  the 
Metropolitan  Museum,  was  declared  by  Albert  Wolff  to  be  the  best 
piece  of  painting  in  the  Salon  of  1884,  and  Wolff,  if  no  very  subtle 
critic,  knew  his  trade  and  voiced  accurately  the  current  opinion. 
This  first  method  was  followed  in  a  number  of  studies  mostly 
Spanish  and  then  it  changed  to  a  quite  different  handling,  where 
refinement  of  enveloping  tone  was  sought  for  and  the  means  of 
obtaining  it  were  obscured,  as  in  the  "Woman  in  Red,"  the  "  Woman 
in  White,"  and  the  "  Sacristy  in  Arragon";  and  then  another  change 
came,  and  the  canvases  were  keyed  up  to  the  brightest,  lightest  tone 
like  the  "  Otero."  All  of  these  methods  have  been  used  not  only 
consecutively,  but  interchangeably,  and  brilliant  work  has  been  done 
in  each,  the  main  reproach  of  the  critic  being  that  of  late  years  there 
have  not  been  as  many  as  were  to  be  desired.  Another  portrait 
painter  who  also  began  with  something  of  the  Munich  training  is 
Julian  Story,  who  was  one  of  Duveneck's  pupils,  and  though  he 
afterward  went  through  the  Paris  ateliers,  there  remains  still,  as 
with  Dannat,  some  trace  of  the  earlier  influences  in  broader,  more 
dashing  brush  work,  though  there  has  been  added  an  elegance  and 
sprightliness  not  at  all  Teutonic. 

These  men  painted  as  a  rule  the  life  of  Paris  or  of  France ;  the 
aristocrats  or  the  poor  of  the  great  city,  the  peasants  or  bourgeois 
of  the  provinces.  Another  group  travelled  and  recorded  in  their 
work  the  strange  or  picturesque  sights  that  they  had  seen.  Many 
were  tempted  by  the  atmosphere,  the  picturesque  costumes,  and  the 


4o8  HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

artistic  traditions  of  Holland.  McEwen  had  been  there,  and  there 
amone  others  went  George  Hitchcock  and  Gari  Melchers.  The 
first  painted  the  tulip  fields,  glowing  in  the  soft,  bright  sunlight  with 
a  brilliancy  that  has  almost  obscured  the  variety  of  his  later  work. 
Melchers  has  interpreted  the  daily  life  of  the  seafaring  folk  of  the 
little  villages  in  all  its  bare  simplicity,  —  the  labor,  the  courtship,  the 
church-going,  —  but  it  is  done  with  a  peculiar  insight  and  sympathy. 
The  life  is  hard  and  unadorned,  but  it  is  neither  sordid  nor  unhappy. 
The  people  are  of  the  same  race  that  Winslow  Homer  delights  in, 
used  to  the  open  air,  sturdy  and  self-reliant ;  and  they  are  painted 
with  something  of  Holbein's  sincerity,  not  prettified  but  not  degraded 
or  caricatured  either.  The  young  girls  have  the  grace  of  their  youth, 
the  mothers  the  tenderness  of  their  maternity,  and  the  old  men  the 
rugged  dignity  of  sailors  who  have  faced  danger  unafraid.  The 
painting  is  also  excellent  as  painting,  largely  in  the  cool,  grayish, 
open-air  tones,  with  no  dark  shadows  or  brilliant  light,  but  with  each 
mass  of  color  kept  fiat  and  pure,  the  outlines  firm  and  characteristic, 
and  the  masses  "spotting"  into  an  interesting  composition. 

In  contrast  to  this  search  for  the  quiet  life,  Edwin  Lord  Weeks 
has  pushed  through  semi-civilized  lands  as  far  as  India  and  has  given 
to  those  who  know  only  the  gray  western  world  some  idea  of  the 
sunlight,  the  color,  and  the  strange,  curiously  wrought  structures  of 
the  East,  and  his  clear,  sure  interpretation  carries  conviction  of  the 
accuracy  of  the  reproduction,  not  only  of  the  places  but  of  their  light 
and  atmosphere,  and  the  strange  and  varied  life  which  circulates 
through  them.  Charles  J.  Theriat,  too,  has  reported  in  delicately 
drawn,  minutely  finished  canvases  the  wandering  life  of  the  herdsmen 
in  southern  Algeria  and  especially  the  country  around  Biskra.  But 
the  authorized  painter  of  Algeria  and  all  the  south  shore  of  the  Medi- 
terranean is  Frederick  A.  Bridgman,  who  after  each  incursion  into 
outside  territory  returns  again  to  its  sunlight,  its  blue  sky,  its  white 
housetops,  or  its  darkened  rooms.  He  was  one  of  the  earliest  of  Ameri- 
can students  to  settle  in  Paris,  going  there  in  1866  and  sending  back 
work  to  the  Academy  exhibition  in  1871.  He  was  represented  in  all 
the  early  exhibitions  of  the  Society  of  American  Artists,  and  probably 
were  it  not  for  his  absence  abroad  he  would  have  been  one  of  the 
foundation  members.     From  the  very  first  his  painting  was  facile 


AMERICAN    PAINTERS    IN    EUROPE  409 

and  sure,  with  no  indication  of  effort  or  of  diflficulties  strufrsrled  with 
in  vain.  Pictures  like  tlie  "  American  Circus  in  France,"  or  even  a 
life-size  group  of  two  girls  in  a  boat,  which  seems  even  earlier,  show 
none  of  the  hesitancy  of  a  beginner,  but  have  the  sureness  of  long 
practice.  There  were  Breton  and  Normandy  subjects  among  these 
early  pictures,  but  in  1S73  he  visited  Egypt  and  Algeria  and  began 
the  work  by  which  he  is  best  known.  There  were  some  recon- 
structions of  ancient  life  —  the  "Funeral  of  a  Mummy,"  the  "Proces- 
sion of  the  Bull  Apis"  —  natural  in  a  pupil  of  Gerome  and  showing 
some  of  the  best  qualities  of  the  master;  but  there  were  more  repro- 
ductions of  the  actual  life,  the  receptions  in  the  old  palace  of  the 
Beys  of   Algiers,   the    gathering  of    the  women   in   cemeteries   for 


Fig.  8S. — -Alexander  Harrison:  The  Wave,  Pennsylvania  Academy. 
[Copyright,  1898,  Vty  The  Pennsylvania  Academy  of  Fine  Arts.] 

mourning  and    gossip,   the   trading   in    the    bazaar,   the  life   of    the 
harem,  and  the  bargainings  of  the  horse-dealers. 

The  record  seems  less  exact  than  that  of  the  India  of  Weeks,  or 
at  least  the  latter  seems  to  have  sought  picturesqueness  by  literally 
copying  all  characteristic  details  in  their  completeness,  while  Bridg- 
man  looks  for  prettiness  and  selects  what  appeals  to  him  from  that 
side  and  lets  the  rest  go.  Surely  there  are  old  and  skinny  ladies  in 
Algeria  as  elsewhere,  but  they  are  rigorously  banished  from  the 
assemblage  of  plump  and  youthful  forms  wnth  which  his  pictures 
are  so  fully  supplied.  He  lavishes  upon  them  the  same  grace  that 
he  gives  his  classical  figures  in  his  poetic  or  imaginative  composi- 
tions, for  almost  alone  among  the  Americans  in  Paris  he  has  painted 


4IO  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

a  considerable  number  of  purely  ideal  subjects.  His  production  has 
been  very  great,  but  it  has  not  affected  the  execution.  There  is  no 
slovenliness  or  neglect  in  any  of  them.  If  a  reproach  is  to  be  made, 
it  would  be  the  one  hinted  at  above  of  an  excess  of  prettiness,  the 
line,  the  color,  the  composition,  and  the  figures  have  all  a  sweetness 
that  is  at  times  a  trifle  cloying,  but  it  is  accompanied  by  qualities 
rarely  found  in  work  open  to  such  suspicion.  Above  all,  the  drafts- 
manship, though  facile,  is  sure  and  sensitive;  the  Algerian  women, 
though  lovely,  keep  their  racial  type  as  well  as  the  men  and  children, 
the  settings,  whether  of  landscape  or  architecture,  are  flawless  in  con- 
struction, and  a  special  praise  is  due  to  the  drawing  of  the  barb  horses 
with  their  delicate  heads,  smooth  round  bodies,  and  clean  trim  legs. 

Like  Bridgman,  Alexander  Harrison  was  also  a  pupil  of  Gerome; 
but  unlike  him  there  is  no  trace  even  in  his  earlier  pictures  of  his 
master's  classical  tastes.  From  the  first  he  felt  the  fascination  of  the 
open  air.  His  student  days  came  at  a  time  of  enthusiasm,  when  for 
a  group  of  the  younger  men,  Bastien-Le  Page  was  a  name  to  conjure 
with,  and  when  they  were  striving,  like  him,  to  look  at  nature  out  of 
doors  with  eyes  unblinded  by  old  traditions.  Some  of  the  older 
masters,  from  the  Holland  school  down  to  Millet,  had  given  the 
enveloping  quality  of  the  atmosphere,  though  they  had  retained  the 
warm  studio  tones  ;  but  it  was  discovered  that  shadows  under  the  soft, 
misty  sky  of  France  were  not  of  any  one  fixed  color,  but  infinitely 
varied  with  the  varying  light,  and  the  ''Plciii  airists  "  insisted  that 
the  truth  should  be  given  in  all  its  complexity.  Something  of  this 
had  been  rendered  by  Courbet  and  his  successors,  Manet  and  Monet ; 
but  they  had  tried  for  broad,  general  effect  with  a  disregard  of  detail 
and  with  eccentricities  of  brush  work  disconcerting  to  the  uninitiated. 
Bastien  and  his  friends  applied  to  outdoor  nature  the  minute,  sensi- 
tive draftsmanship  that  they  had  gained  in  the  ateliers.  There  were 
no  formulas,  no  traditions  for  the  new  school ;  everything  had  to  be 
discovered  by  the  artist  and  translated  by  him  somehow  into  paint. 
In  all  these  explorations  Harrison  was  a  leader.  He  looked  at 
nature  with  an  eye  unclouded  by  recollections  of  the  old  masters 
and  wonderfully  responsive  to  the  delicate  variations  of  color.  He 
gave  the  gray,  soft  tones  of  flesh  in  the  open  air  with  only  the 
slightest  modelling  and  entirely  without  the  strong,  dark  shadows 


AMERICAN    PAINTERS   IN    EUROPE  411 

formerly  employed,  and  he  blended  figures  and  landscape  into  an 
intimate  unity. 

All  of  this  Bastien  had  also  done  in  soft,  diffused  light,  but 
the  "  Arcadia "  of  Harrison  was  an  original  and  important  inno- 
vation, for  in  it  the  most  brilliant  sunlight  in  all  its  strength  and 
changeableness  was  analyzed  as  it  had  never  been  before.  The 
golden  light  struck  through  the  trees  and  lay  in  great  patches  on  the 
grass,  and  its  reflection  lighted  up  the  bodies  of  the  nymphs  with 
tints  rarely,  if  ever,  used  for  flesh  before,  but  whose  accuracy  was 
manifest.  And  the  effect  was  not  alone  of  accuracy  but  of  beauty. 
The  drawing  of  the  nude  figures  was  realistic,  and  it  seemed  as  if  a 
touch  of  academic  idealism  would  have  done  them  no  harm,  but  apart 
from  that  the  canvas  shone  with  the  joy  of  light  and  air.  Finer  yet 
were  the  marines  that  followed,  the  long  waves  rolling  in  on  the 
sandy  beach  in  the  early  twilight  with  the  infinite  variation  of  their 
toppling  crests  or  foamy  ebb  lighted  with  every  subtle  tint  of  rosy 
iridescence.  The  wave  of  "  La  Crepuscule  "  has  been  painted  by 
hundreds  since,  as  has  its  moonlit  successor,  but  no  one  has  yet 
reached,  even  approximately,  the  charm  of  the  originals. 

These  marines  were  the  admiration  even  of  those  recalcitrants 
whom  the  "  Arcadia  "  had  outraged.  Harrison's  position  is  assured 
and  he  has  received  the  honors  and  recompenses  that  are  his  due. 
The  open-air  school  has  been  accepted,  and  is  now  "  understanded 
of  the  people,"  but  it  is  well  to  recall,  so  rapidly  has  public  taste 
changed,  that  many  of  the  men  whose  work  now  seems  to  us  good, 
but  good  along  conventional  lines,  were  at  first  considered  eccentric 
and  dangerous  innovators.  The  only  school  of  thirty  years  ago  that 
has  not  been  generally  comprehended  by  the  average  art  lover  is  that 
of  Manet,  which  still  finds  many  insensible  to  its  merits.  The  whole 
training  of  the  big  studios  was  in  another  direction  so  that,  though 
some  admired,  yet  it  found  only  a  single  follower  among  the  Ameri- 
cans, but  that  a  notable  one,  Mary  Cassatt. 

The  school  of  Manet  is  not  a  large  one,  nor  do  the  works  of  the 
different  members  closely  resemble  each  other,  for  one  of  the  funda- 
mental requirements  was  a  distinct  personality.  There  might  even 
seem  to  be  some  doubt  about  placing  Miss  Cassatt  in  it,  for  her  taste 
was  formed  by  the  study  of  Velasquez  in  Spain  before  she  settled  in 


412  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

Paris;  but  tlic  classification  is  sufficiently  close  to  give  an  idea  of 
her  affiliations.  Like  Manet  she  sees  the  world  with  no  desire  to 
alter  it  to  ideal  pre-conceptions,  she  sees  it  also  in  large  spots  of  local 
color,  not  as  contrasting  masses  of  light  and  shade ;  these  spots  she 
does  not  weaken  by  elaborate  modelling  as  Bastien-Le  Page  did,  and 
unlike  him  and  his  followers,  she  insists  that  the  paint  shall  be  spread 
in  a  solid,  fine  impasto,  not  broken  up  in  a  multitude  of  small,  thin 
touches. 

To  do  work  of  this  kind  requires  insight  of  a  peculiar  kind,  a  syn- 
thetic mind  for  form,  grasping  it  instinctively  in  its  simplest,  most 
characteristic  mass;  and  at  the  same  time  a  most  delicate  perception 
of  all  the  refinements  of  color  and  tone,  for  there  is  no  elaborate  draw- 
ing to  hold  the  picture  together,  and  if  the  great  masses  are  not  per- 
fect in  value  it  falls  to  pieces.  Over  these  difficulties  Miss  Cassatt  has 
triumphed,  her  drawing  is  sure  and  characteristic,  her  coloring  subtly 
harmonized,  and  she  has,  moreover,  a  fine  feeling  for  arrangement, 
placing  the  masses  of  her  figures  so  that  the}'  form  agreeable  patterns ; 
but  her  painting  is  painters'  painting,  and  makes  its  strongest  appeal 
to  members  of  her  own  craft.  By  them  and  by  the  more  enlightened 
amateurs  she  is  appreciated  and  honored  ;  but  the  great  public  stands 
aloof,  indifferent  or  hostile.  She  has  never  catered  to  it  or  given  it 
that  obvious  prettiness  that  it  loves.  Even  her  color,  which  is  her 
greatest  charm,  is  made  up  of  subdued  whites  and  grays  and  pale,  sad 
tones,  rarely  a  touch  that  is  bright  and  strong,  and  the  drawing  is 
uncompromising  in  its  search  for  character  rather  than  grace.  The 
average  mother  and  child  of  real  life  resembles  but  remotely  the 
creations  of  Bouguereau ;  but  the  versions  by  Bouguereau  come 
much  nearer  to  the  popular  ideals  of  what  babies  should  be.  Miss 
Cassatt  is  not  to  be  diverted  by  such  ideals  from  reality,  which  has  its 
own  beauty,  —  a  beauty  which  so  appeals  to  her  that  she  seems  rather 
to  avoid  nature  w^hen  it  runs  to  a  more  popular  comeliness  and  so 
continues  to  paint  stubby  toes  and  pudgy  noses,  to  the  delight  of 
the  few  and  the  bewilderment  of  the  many. 

This  appeal  to  a  restricted  few  is  not  a  position  forced  upon  Miss 
Cassatt  by  repeated  rebuffs.  P^rom  the  first  she  has  refused  to  exhibit 
in  the  great  annual  salons,  but  in  her  indifference  to  their  applause 
and  honors  she  stands  alone.     All  the  other  Paris-American  painters 


FIG.   89.  —  CASSATT  :     MOTHER   AND   CHILD,   OWNED   BY   DURAx\D-RUEL  &   SONS. 


AMERICAN    PAINTERS    IN    EUROPE 


415 


mentioned  (and  many  more,  whose  omission  is  unavoidable  from  lack 
of  space  for  even  the  slightest  notice)  have  regularly  displayed  their 
works  in  the  great  competitive  exhibitions,  and  each  boasts  after  his 
name  a  long  string  of  honors  won  therein.  Such  a  grading  is  any- 
thing but  definitive,  yet  from  the  medals  and  decorations  a  suffi- 
ciently accurate  general  idea  may  be  obtained  of  the  artists'  standing, 
not  only  among  themselves,  but  as  a  part  of  the  great  cosmopolitan 
hody.  The  result  is  flattering  to  our  national  pride.  In  proportion 
to  their  numbers,  they  have  more  than  the  average  share  of  rewards, 
and  deservedly  so.  There  is  something  in  the  stability  of  their 
position,  with  its  steady  accumulation  of  vested  rights,  to  arouse  the 
envy  of  the  artists  who  came  back  to  America  at  the  end  of  the  seven- 
ties, and  who  have  been  practically  forced  to  remake  their  reputation 
every  year  since. 

But  there  have  been  drawbacks  to  the  expatriate  life  also.  Closely 
united  as  they  were  to  French  training  and  conditions,  it  is  natural 
that  the  career  of  the  men  who  remained  abroad  should  have  agreed 
with  that  of  their  French  contemporaries.  Now  the  most  striking  fact 
in  the  recent  development  of  art  has  been  the  failure  of  the  French 
painters,  who  came  to  the  front  in  the  ten  or  fifteen  years  succeeding 
1875  to  sustain  their  reputation.  They  triumphed  aggressively  in 
the  exposition  of  1889,  and  declared  that  art  was  to  be  rejuvenated 
by  them ;  but  at  the  next  great  international  fair,  eleven  years  later, 
their  boast  was  wofully  unfulfilled.  It  w^as  not  that  they  were  grown 
old,  they  were  in  the  strength  of  their  age ;  their  seniors,  the  old 
academic  group  that  had  been  denounced  for  a  quarter  of  a  century 
by  them  as  worn-out,  empty  formalists,  were  still  in  their  places  turn- 
ing out  work  strong  and  masterly  that  hardly  showed  a  trace  of  the 
burden  of  their  years.  But  the  enthusiasm  of  the  innovators  seemed 
to  have  weakened,  their  inspiration  to  have  vanished.  Many  of  them 
were  forced  to  go  back  eight  or  ten  years  to  find  works  that  would 
fitly  maintain  their  reputation,  and  the  critics  lamented  that  the 
popularity  of  a  painter  lasted  no  longer  than  that  of  a  tenor.  Some- 
thing of  this  transitoriness  was  due  to  the  search  for  novelty  rather 
than  beauty,  the  desire  to  be  the  first  to  represent  some  special  effect 
of  light  or  to  put  upon  canvas  some  unusual  subject ;  but  even  more 
to  the  exigencies  of  the  annual  Salon  and  of  Parisian  criticism.     The 


4l6  HISTORY   OF    AMKRICAX    PAIXTLXG 

works  were  placed  in  incongruous  surroundings  and  judged  by  their 
ability  to  arrest  for  an  instant  the  eye,  wearied  by  the  sight  of  four 
or  five  thousand  other  pictures  equally  clamoring  for  attention. 

These  conditions  have  not  been  fax'orable  to  the  steady  develop- 
ment of  the  highest  qualities  either  of  imagination  or  of  execution, 
and  these  conditions  —  or  others  —  have  affected  the  American  paint- 
ers in  France.  At  the  exhibition  of  1889  their  section  was  clearly  in 
advance  of  that  occupied  by  works  sent  from  America;  in  1900  it 
cannot  be  said  that  the  situation  was  reversed.  The  foreign  Ameri- 
can section,  buttressed  by  the  works  of  Whistler  and  Sargent,  was  an 
admirable  display  ;  but  the  native  American  section  was  approximately 
equal  to  it,  preference  for  one  above  the  other  depending  largely  on 
the  personal  view-point.  Of  the  Paris  painters,  however,  who  were 
the  strength  of  the  exhibition  in  1889,  only  one  or  two  had  advanced, 
more  had  distinctly  retrograded ;  but  most  were  about  where  they 
had  been  before,  doing  the  same  work  in  the  same  way  with  a 
sliehtlv  increased  facilitv  and  a  somewhat  diminished  enthusiasm. 
With  the  men  who  had  worked  alongside  of  them  as  students,  but 
had  been  obliged  to  return  to  America,  the  case  was  very  different. 
They  had  been  forced  to  paint  not  for  the  Salon,  but  for  private 
houses,  to  modify  the  workmanship  learned  in  the  schools,  to  make 
experiments,  to  change  their  style  and  their  subjects  in  order  to  find 
something  that  they  were  willing  to  paint  and  the  public  was  will- 
ing to  buy.  Many  were  doing  better  work  than  in  1889;  some  were 
doing  worse,  but  hardly  one  was  doing  the  same  work.  There  had 
been  development,  and  though  it  was  easy  enough  to  see  where  most 
of  the  men  had  got  their  training,  and  though  certain  pessimistic 
critics  still  repeated  the  old  cry  that  Americans  were  only  imitators 
of  the  French,  yet  there  were  evident  to  the  unbiassed  observer  cer- 
tain distinct  characteristics  of  workmanshij)  and  of  feeling  running 
through  the  whole  which  constituted  a  school  quite  as  individual  as 
most  of  the  Continental  ones. 

These  characteristics  had  been  of  slow  growth  and  slower  recog- 
nition. Serious  and  competent  critics  were  few  in  America,  and 
their  views  were  swamped  in  the  great  mass  of  emotional  or  repor- 
torial  writing,  one  man's  opinion  being  held  to  be  just  as  good 
as    another's,  and    better   if    he   proclaimed   it   more   loudly.      Few 


AMERICAN    PAINTERS   IN    EUROPE  417 

foreign  critics  had  a  chance  to  see  what  was  being  done,  and 
most  of  them  found  it  more  convenient  and  patriotic  to  follow  the 
accepted  opinion ;  but  if  a  man  of  wide  culture  and  open  mind 
came  to  the  country,  he  was  apt  to  be  surprised  at  the  lack  of 
appreciation  of  our  painters'  achievements.  Some  of  the  more 
prominent  (artistically  rather  than  financially)  of  the  visiting  por- 
trait painters  spoke  strongly  on  the  matter,  and  Dr.  Bode  of  the 
Berlin  Museum,  writing  of  the  Chicago  Exposition  in  the  Zeit- 
schrift  filr  Bildende  Kunst,  for  his  own  people  and  not  for  America, 
expressed  the  most  enthusiastic  and  generous  admiration  for  the 
beauty  and  originality  of  the  American  school  of  painting,  and 
declared  that  the  American  section  was  not  only  the  largest,  but 
the  best  in  the  exhibition. 

In  addition  to  the  older  men  in  Paris,  whose  position  is  now  well 
assured,  there  have  come  forward  in  the  last  dozen  years  a  group  of 
painters  allied  to  Frenchmen  like  Cottet  or  Simon,  and  representing 
the  reaction  from  the  type  of  Salon  picture,  whose  laborious  and 
unimaginative  painting  produced  something  of  the  effect  of  a  col- 
ored photograph.  These  demand  a  deeper  sentiment,  a  richer  color 
(it  is  apt  to  be  darker  than  seems  necessary),  a  bolder  handling  of 
paint,  a  more  decorative  composition.  The  tradition  of  Manet  reap- 
pears, but  modified,  less  eccentric  and  less  strong. 

Among  their  works,  to  choose  a  few  names  from  the  mass,  are 
the  scriptural  subjects  of  H.  O.  Tanner  painted  with  all  the  Oriental 
surroundings,  but  with  strong,  religious  feeling,  the  mellow  landscapes 
of  Van  der  Weyden  with  their  antique  grace,  the  fishing  boats  of 
Fromuth  and  Koopman,  dark  and  rich  in  tone  with  their  sails  and 
reflections  patterning  strangely  against  the  sky  or  in  the  water  ;  and 
the  arrangements  of  Maurer,  where  the  subject  is  often  nothing  but 
an  excuse  for  displaying  a  perfection  of  brush  work  and  ringing  the 
changes  on  exquisite  gradations  of  white  and  black.  These  men  are 
no  longer  beginners,  they  have  achieved  a  position  for  themselves, 
but  yet  it  is  permissible  to  expect  from  them  a  further  advance, 
completer  work,  and  especially  an  excellent  influence  on  the  rising 
school. 


2£ 


CHAPTER  XXII 

AMERICAN'    ARTISTS    IN    LONDON 

London  as  a  Rf.sokt  for  Amfjiican  Artists.  —  F.  D.  Millet. — Abbey.  —  His  Illus- 
trations. —  His  Paintings. —J.  J.  Shannon.— J.  McClure  Hamilton. —  Sargent. 
—  Youth  and  Training  under  Carolus-Duran.  —  His  Workmanship.  —  The 
Characteristics  ok  his  Portraits. — His  Other  Easel  Pictures.  —  His 
Limitations 

Mention  has  been  made  of  the  older  colonies  of  painters,  formed 
in  Italy  or  Germany ;  but  of  late  years  these  have  had  few  additions, 
Paris  has  been  the  headquarters  of  Americans  who  remained  on  the 
Continent  to  practise  their  art,  and  that  whether  they  Hved  in  the  city 
itself  or  passed  most  of  their  time  elsewhere,  in  Brittany  like  Alexander 
Harrison,  or  in  Holland  like  Melchers.  The  only  place  that  could 
be  considered  at  all  her  rival  was  London,  which  held  out  entirely 
different  inducements.  It  is  not  a  villc  lumrcrc  —  least  of  all  in  mat- 
ters of  art.  .As  a  training  place  for  painters,  even  its  own  artists 
are  apt  to  consider  it  inferior  to  Paris  ;  but  it  is  the  greatest  and 
richest  city  in  the  world,  and  an  inexhaustible  market  for  anything 
that  can  minister  io  its  comfort  or  luxury,  including  painting. 
Pictures  are  sent  there  from  all  Europe,  but  as  a  rule  the  foreign 
painters  who  settle  there  are  portraitists.  This  is  also  true,  as  a 
rule,  of  American  artists,  though  the  language  and  the  life,  the 
similarity  of  moral  and  intellectual  standards,  render  it  a  pleasanter 
dwelling-})lace  than  the  Continent  for  some  whose  subject-matter 
renders  residence  in  America  difficult  or  impossible.  Joseph  Pen- 
nell,  for  instance,  could  hardly  produce  his  delicate  records  of  the 
picturesqueness  of  English  cathedrals  and  old  P'rench  towns  in 
New  York,  and  it  would  be  almost  as  difficult  for  men  like  Millet 
and  Al^l^ey,  trying  to  re])roduce  the  charm  and  quaintncss  of  old-time 
life,  to  live  permanently  in  America. 

Of  these  two,  however,  Erancis  D.  Millet  is  much  less  firmly 
anchored  to   England  tlien  Abbey.      He  has  made  it  his  home,  but 

41S 


SARGENT:    MRS.   IAN   HAMILTON. 


His  Illi 


cen  made  ul  t! 

liters,  lormea 

"  ■  but  of  late  jy 

■e\v  additions, 

-.(Inin:-*-:-^  of  _ 

lained  on  the 

]  that  vvhethei 

\e  city 

Isewhere,  in  Britt? 

vander 

anything 
painting. 

r'ictui\  '       ''\n 

'  -■•'^  +  '  -  :  u^,  ci.T   a 

life,  the 

er 

,xt-matter 

oph  Pen- 

I    I  he 

.  n.T   in 

Millet 


;ca. 

.Wrr.IIMAH    V!Ar   .8MM 


•  firmly 

nl  ....  noma,  but 


AMERICAN    ARTISTS   IiN    LONDON 


419 


with  long  periods  of  absence  in  other  lands  (including  his  own), 
as  his  multiple  activities  and  occupations  have  led  him.  For  Millet 
has  the  old  American  versatility,  the  abounding  energy  that  can  be 
turned  at  will  to  whatever  task  most  insistently  demands  it,  and  the 
intelligence  and  temper  that  can  push  it  through  to  success.  He 
has  been  a  war  correspondent  in  many  lands,  he  has  been  an  illus- 
trator, he  has  written  travels,  criticism,  fiction,  he  has  acted  as  an 
expert  on  old  pictures,  he  has  raised  carnations  ;  it  is  even  reported 
that  in  an  emergency  during  the  Turco-Russian  War  he  successfully 
amputated  an  arm  at  the  shoulder. 

All  of  these  varied  activities,  and  the  list  is  far  from  complete, 
he  has  exercised  not  as  an  amateur  or  a  tyro,  but  as  a  professional, 
asking  no  odds  and  holding  his  place  with  the  best ;  but  his  painting 
shows  no  signs  of  his  multitudinous  distractions.  It  is  complete, 
thorough,  carried  through  to  the  end,  with  no  trace  of  haste  or 
neglect.  In  the  completeness  and  perfection  of  his  finish,  he  sug- 
gests Alma  Tadema,  who,  like  him,  studied  at  the  Antwerp  Academy 
before  he  fixed  his  home  in  London ;  but  Millet's  work  is  more 
varied  in  subject  and  execution  than  Tadema's  minute  and  charming 
reconstructions  of  antique  life.  These,  too,  he  has  done  but  more, 
apparently,  because  the  antique  draperies  set  off  a  comely  girl  to 
advantage  than  from  any  intimate  sympathy  with  the  time.  It  was 
England  of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  that  most  ap- 
pealed to  him,  not  in  its  monumental  aspect,  but  in  its  quiet,  human 
side,  —  the  country  parlors,  the  libraries  of  the  scholars,  or  the  cheer- 
ful roomy  kitchens  with  their  whitewashed  walls,  peopled  with  far- 
travelled  adventurers,  puritans,  or  buxom  serving  maids.  The  scene 
of  one  of  the  best  is  laid  in  New  York  itself,  where  the  legendary  Cor- 
nelius, the  trumpeter,  basks  in  the  admiration  of  a  surrounding  female 
circle  before  his  untimely  death  in  the  dark  waters  of  Spuyten 
Duyvel. 

All  of  these  groups  are  skilful  in  arrangement  and  natural  and 
unforced  in  attitude  and  expression.  They  do  not  savor  of  the  cos- 
tumer  and  the  hired  model.  The  execution  is  solid  and  the  color 
clean  and  sweet.  The  only  reproach  that  can  be  brought  against 
them  is  that  their  very  completeness,  their  smooth  and  enamel-like 
quality,  is  too  uniform  and  does  not  differentiate  textures  as  a  more 


420  HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

varied  handling  might  do.  Besides  these  comparatively  small  easel 
pictures  and  his  large  decorations,  Millet  has  latterly  turned  his  at- 
tention to  portraits,  adapting  his  handling  to  life-size  works  with  his 
customary  facility.  He  b.as  also  done  a  few  portraits  on  a  much 
smaller  scale,  the  lieads  only  two  or  three  inches  long.  These  have 
not  been  exhibited,  and  consequently  are  not  well  known  by  the 
public,  but  they  are  charming  in  character  and  distinction. 

Allied  with  Millet  not  only  as  friend  and  neighbor  in  the  little 
village  of  Broadway  in  Worcestershire,  but  also  by  similar  tastes 
and  view-point  is  Edwin  A.  Abbey  ;  but  though  Millet's  work  is 
well  known  and  popular,  Abbey's  has  a  still  greater  public.  He 
began  with  illustrations  in  the  widely  circulated  magazines  to  which 
countless  enthusiasts  looked  forward  from  month  to  month,  and 
bought  eagerly  when  they  were  afterwards  published  in  book  form. 
Later  the  photographs  of  his  decorations  in  the  Boston  Public 
Library  had  an  almost  equal  vogue.  It  would  be  dif^cult  to  name 
another  living  artist  who  has  given  so  much  delight,  and  a  delight 
so  keen  and  so  wholesome.  To  hundreds  of  thousands  he  has 
renewed  the  charm  of  the  old  poems  that  had  grown  hackneyed  by 
constant  familiarity.  He  enters  perfectly  into  the  sentiment  both 
of  the  poet  and  of  the  modern  reader  toward  him,  which  latter 
is  curiously  compounded  half  of  admiration  of  the  verses  and  half 
of  amusement  at  the  odd  turns  of  phrase  and  thought  of  a  past  age. 

Abbey  renders  perfectly  the  conscious  affectations  of  Herrick  and 
the  real  tenderness  and  feeling  that  shines  through  his  conceits. 
He  disentangles  the  mingled  inspiration  that  makes  of  Sally  in 
our  Alley  at  once  a  lyric  and  a  humorous  poem.  He  understands 
the  social  charm  of  the  old  vicar,  Guglielmus  Brown,  "  F/r  nulla 
nan  donajidus  laurii','  and  the  irresistible  fascination  of  the  unprin- 
cipled Irishman  of  Athlone,  and  he  embellishes  them  with  a  wealth 
of  detail,  quaint,  unexpected,  and  amusing.  Thus  did  the  porters 
carry  the  sedan-chairs  over  the  cobblestone  streets,  in  such  latticed 
bowers  was  tea  or  syllabub  served  at  the  fair,  a  sword  knot  was  tied 
like  this,  and  thus  the  ample  petticoats  of  the  eighteenth  century 
puffed  out  when  the  indwelling  lady  sat  down.  The  ballad  of  the 
LcafJicr  Bottcl  was  imperfectly  comprehensible  until  he  showed  the 
construction   of    that   friend   of    the   simi)]e   life,  and   all    was   done 


o  i 

>  o 

'^  I I 

y 


O 


AMERICAN    ARTlsrS   IN    LONDON 


423 


with  apparent  unconsciou.snes.s.  Tlic  initiated  recognized  that  this 
enormous  mass  of  minute  and  curious  knowledge  could  only  have 
been  gained  by  infinite  research,  united  witli  an  imagination  of 
wonderful  c()nstructi\'e  power;  but  tliere  was  no  hint  of  effort  in 
the  work.  The  odd  doorways  or  casements,  the  old  iron  work,  tlie 
formal  gardens,  were  touched  in  as  Charles  Keene  would  put  a  bit 
of  London  street  or  Scotch  moor  behind  his  figures  —  such  were  tlic 
surroundings  which  he  saw,  and  he  added  them  to  fill  out  the  pic- 
tures; but  your  attention  was  not  solicited  in  the  least.  So  Abbeys 
knowledge  of  his  Old  World  detail  was  so  complete,  so  assimilated, 
that  he  was  not  curious  to  display  it.  He  hid  it  behind  his  figures, 
he  sketched  it  in  the  slightest  and  most  fugitive  lines;  but  it  was 
impeccable,  without  a  false  or  disquieting  note. 

His  execution  is  as  complete  as  his  conception,  at  least  in  his 
pen-and-ink  drawings,  which  are,  as  a  rule,  better  than  those  in 
wash.  The  etchings  and  drawings  of  Fortuny,  which  reached  the 
country  about  the  time  that  he  began  working  on  the  staff  of 
Harper  Brothers,  aided  in  forming  his  technique  and  for  him  they 
proved  excellent  models.  He  did  not  get  the  vigorous  contrasts, 
the  dashing  spotting  with  pure  blacks  of  Fortuny.  He  shows  less 
"  temperament "  (as  the  word  is  employed  in  the  studios),  but  he 
has  the  same  skill  in  using  a  multiplicity  of  crossing  lines,  re- 
touched and  perfected  endlessly  and  yet  not  losing  their  freshness, 
the  tone  remaining  transparent  and  brilliant.  Everywhere  the  line 
is  sympathetic,  sensitive,  never  degenerating  into  mere  caligraphic 
facility.  This  unflagging  interest  is  amazing,  not  an  end  of  ribbon, 
not  a  shoe  lace,  not  even  the  leg  of  a  stool  but  is  understood 
and  rendered  with  enthusiasm. 

Under  the  circumstances  it  was  inevitable  that  Abbey  should 
be  encouraged  to  illustrate  Shakespeare.  Having  done  such 
marvels  with  the  lesser  poets,  how  much  more  wonderful  things 
would  he  do  with  a  great  one  ?  The  argument  is  logical  but  falla- 
cious. In  the  first  place,  so  great  an  undertaking,  no  matter  how 
congenial,  is  bound  to  have  its  moments  when  it  becomes  a  piece 
of  task-work  to  which  the  artist  forces  himself,  —  and  such  moments 
are  not  favorable  to  genial  invention,  —  but  the  main  difficulty  lies 
deeper.     For  those  who  read,  the  characters  of  Shakespeare  have 


424  HISTORY    OF    AMERICAN    I'AIMING 

become  intimate  personal  friends ;  we  are  not  to  be  put  off  with  a 
jewelled  stomacher  or  an  Italian  terrace.  We  know  Rosalind  and 
Beatrice,  Falstaff  and  Jacques,  and  we  care  nothing  about  their 
clothes.  If,  maddened  at  the  Venetian  parody  of  justice,  Shylock 
had  removed  to  Amsterdam  and  been  painted  there  in  his  old  age 
by  Rembrandt,  or  if,  in  defiance  of  all  chronology,  Velasquez  on  a 
diplomatic  mission  to  the  northern  courts  had  made  a  portrait  of 
the  young  Prince  of  Denmark,  we  might  have  had  satisfying  like- 
nesses. Titian  might  have  painted  Benedick  and  Giorgione,  Romeo  ; 
but,  lackins:  such  works  as  these,  has  any  one  ever  seen  a  satis- 
factory  portrait  of  a  Shakespearian  character?  Abbey  did  as  well 
as  any  one  has  ever  done  and  gave  a  series  of  graceful  figures  in 
quaint  or  beautiful  settings.  Technically  many  of  them  are  among 
his  best  works,  though  they  should  be  seen  in  the  pages  of  the  maga- 
zine (or  better  yet  in  the  originals)  rather  than  in  the  smaller  photo- 
grax'ure  reproductions. 

This  illustrative  work  is  beyond  the  strict  limits  of  a  history  of 
painting,  but  an  account  of  it  is  necessary  in  the  case  of  Abbey,  whose 
work  grew  out  of  it  and  was  formed  by  it.  His  first  paintings  were 
in  the  same  style  —  w^ater-colors  with  body  color  rather  freely  used  — 
and  they  had  all  the  skill  and  charm  of  his  work  for  the  magazines. 
His  beginnings  in  oil  were  less  assured,  the  drawing  was  firm,  but 
the  values  were  disquieting.  The  faces  or  the  marble  terraces  were 
often  as  light  as  the  sky  and  seemed  translucent.  The  fault  was  a 
natural  result  of  much  pen-and-ink  work  where  the  white  of  the 
paper  does  for  all  vacant  spaces,  but  it  shows  in  his  decoration  of 
the  old  Bowling  Green  of  New  Amsterdam  in  the  Imperial  Hotel 
and  in  some  other  works  of  the  time.  It  was  only  temporary, 
however.  In  his  first  great  success  in  oils,  the  "  Richard  the 
Third  and  Lady  Anne,"  there  is  no  trace  of  it,  nor  does  it  reappear. 
The  "  Richard"  and  the  succeeding  Shakespearian  subjects,  "  Hamlet," 
"  Macbeth,"  the  "  Trial  of  Queen  Catherine,"  apart  from  the  unsatis- 
factoriness  which  is  inherent  in  all  attempts  to  render  such  subjects, 
are  admirably  done,  solidly  and  minutely  ])ainted,  filled  with  all  the  old 
wealth  of  costume  and  detail,  and  harmonized  into  a  unity  of  tone,  so 
that  they  have  something  of  the  effect  of  old  tapestry.  The  same  may 
be  said  of  his  latest  achiexement,  the  "Coronation  of  King  l^xlward 


AMERICAN    ARTISTS   IN    LONDON  427 

the  Seventh."  It  is  a  curious  coincidence  that  the  generally  accepted 
picture  of  the  coronation  of  Queen  Victoria  was  done  by  Leslie,  like 
Abbey  an  American,  brought  up  in  Philadelphia  and  receiving  his 
first  instruction  at  the  Academy  there,  and  that  both  artists  have 
succeeded  beyond  hope  in  vivifying  with  some  artistic  interest  sub- 
jects which  by  their  very  ofificial  nature  seem  doomed  to  be  wooden 
and  frigid. 

More  important  even  than  these  elaborate  dramatic  and  histori- 
cal paintings  is  the  series  in  the  Boston  Public  Library,  but  these 
will  be  treated  of  in  a  chapter  especially  devoted  to  decoration.  It 
is  pleasant  to  be  able  to  add  that  these  theoretically  loftier  works 
have  not  obliterated  the  skill  in  black  and  white,  and  that  Abbey  has 
recently  shown  his  ability  to  illustrate  Goldsmith  with  all  the  old 
freshness  and  grace. 

Among  the  portrait  painters  who  flock  to  England  for  patronage, 
America  has  never  failed  to  be  represented,  though  at  present  in 
far  smaller  numbers  proportionately  than  a  century  ago.  It  might  al- 
most be  claimed  that  the  number  was  actually  greater  then  than  now, 
and  though  that  would  be  an  exaggeration,  yet  the  number  is  small 
of  those  who  have  become  permanently  established  in  the  British 
capital.  They  are,  however,  among  the  best,  and  so  strongly  have  they 
enrooted  themselves  that  their  position  as  American  painters  is  more 
questionable  than  might  be  wished.  J.  J.  Shannon,  for  instance,  came 
to  London  when  a  boy  of  sixteen,  got  his  training  at  the  South  Ken- 
sington school,  and  a  year  or  two  before  he  was  of  age  exhibited  por- 
traits that  brought  him  into  prominence.  His  work  is  admirable,  broad 
and  sure,  full  of  beauty  and  of  character;  but  there  is  little  in  it  that 
betrays  the  American  unless  it  be  this  same  breadth  and  dignity 
which  differentiates  it  from  the  great  mass  of  English  work.  Even 
so  there  are  plenty  of  English  artists  whose  work  is  free  from  the  nig- 
gling prettiness  of  the  majority  of  the  pictures  at  the  Royal  Academy, 
and  the  underlying  temper  of  Shannon  is  rather  British.  His  color 
is  more  varied,  his  composition  is  less  academic,  but  his  work  reverts 
in  a  way  to  the  standards  of  Reynolds.  He  loves  handsome  women 
and  pretty  children  and  fine,  healthy  men  with  fine  figures  and  fresh 
complexions.  He  enjoys  them  with  the  same  direct  delight  in  their 
beauty  or  grace.     "  Miss  Kitty  "  is  entirely  in  the  spirit  of   the  older 


428  HISTORY    OF    AMKRKAN    I'AIMINO 

master,  and  while  we  may  liave  a  certain  pride  tliat  so  excellent  an 
artist  was  born  in  Auburn,  New  York,  yet  there  is  little  cause  to 
include  his  work  in  a  History  of  American  Painting. 

The  case  is  not  quite  the  same  with  J.  ]\IcClure  Hamilton.  He 
was  older  when  he  went  abroad,  and  he  studied  with  the  rest  of  his 
compatriots  in  Antwerp  and  Paris.  In  spite  of  the  series  of  portraits 
of  distinguished  Englishmen, —  (jladstone,  Manning,  Tyndall,  Watts, 
and  the  rest  which  constitute  his  best-known  work,  —  he  belongs 
rather  to  the  American  branch  of  the  cosmo})olitan  school.  His 
little  portraits  (they  are  as  a  rule  less  than  half  the  size  of  life)  give 
the  sitter  in  the  familiar  surroundings  of  his  books  or  papers,  with 
more  of  the  intimacy  of  actual  life  and  less  of  official  pose  than  is 
usual.  The  painting  is  thin,  the  background  just  covered  by  a  warm 
glaze  on  which  the  lights  are  touched  in  cool  gray  tones,  without 
much  body,  but  so  surely  that  they  give  a  solid  modelling.  It  is  not 
at  all  an  English  manner  of  work  but  has  something  of  the  French 
accuracy  of  drawing  added  to  the  warm  shadows  of  Antwerp,  which 
eclecticism  of  workmanship  ought  to  constitute  him  an  American. 

A  more  complicated  problem  of  nationality  is  involved  in  the 
case  of  John  S.  Sargent,  and  a  more  important  one  from  the  stand- 
point of  those  who  are  jeahnis  to  exalt  their  country  by  display- 
ing its  famous  sons.  Born  in  Florence  of  American  parents,  he 
received  his  artistic  traininc^  in  Paris  and  has  since  lived  in  En"- 
land,  though  with  much  travelling  on  the  Continent  and  two  or 
three  trips  to  the  land  of  his  allegiance.  His  pictures  have  been 
shown  wherever  pictures  are  to  be  seen,  and  he  has  received  for 
them  all  honors  that  a  painter  can  receive.  P^or  a  dozen  years  Con- 
tinental juries  have  solved  the  ])roblem  of  conciliating  American 
jealousies  in  the  matter  of  awards  by  giving  to  him  and  Whistler 
a  medal  of  honor  apiece.  If  another  had  been  added  to  them,  it 
would  have  unchained  a  furious  discussion  of  relative  altitude ;  but 
by  common  consent  of  the  men  who  exhibited  in  P^irope,  these 
two  stood  abo\e  the  rest,  each   secure   on   his  own   eminence. 

The  argument  for  Whistler's  Americanism  is  based  partly  on 
his  temperament,  but  Sargent's  private  life  is  not  displayed  to  the 
world.  His  oi^inions,  epigrams,  and  animosities  are  not  exploited 
in  the  daily  press.     The  public   know  of   him   only  a  few  dates  and 


AMERICAN    ARTISTS   IN    LONDON 


429 


statistics  and  wliat  tlicy  can  divine  from  his  works.  These  show 
his  artistic  development  clearly  enough,  if  to  outside  influences  is 
added  an  exceptional  inborn  talent.  His  first  studies  were  made 
at  the  Academy  at  Florence  when  he  was  very  young,  and  just 
what  permanent  infiuence  he  received  there  is  not  clear.  The 
Carol us-L)uran  atelier  is  rightly  credited  with  forming  his  style. 
He  was  only  seventeen  when  he  entered.     The  big  roll   of  miscel- 


FiG.  92.  —  Hamilton  :    Poutkait  of  Hon.  Richard  Vaix,  Pknnsyi.vania  Academy. 


laneous  work,  drawings,  water-colors,  landscape  studies  in  the 
style  of  Calame  and  copies  after  the  old  masters,  which  he  showed 
to  gain  admission,  led  Carol  us  to  remark  that  he  had  much  to 
unlearn,  but  his  fellow-students  (all  much  older  than  he)  were 
amazed  at  their  quantity  and  facility.  This  same  ease  of  execution 
remained  with  him.  As  a  student  working  from  the  model  he 
would  cover  a  whole  canvas  with  color  while  others  were  fussing 
over  a  little  patch.  Such  facility  is  apt  to  be  dangerous.  Hundreds 
of  artists  have    stopped  in  their  development  because  the  ability  to 


430  HISrORV    OF    AMKRICAN    rAIMIXCx 

do  a  pleasing  sketch  easilv  has  rendered  them  content  with  that 
and  incapable  of  the  hard  work  and  self-criticism  necessary  to  com- 
pleteness. Sargent,  however,  had  no  such  lethargy  nor  were  his 
talents  checked  or  diverted  into  a  false  channel,  as  might  have  haj3- 
pened  had  he  entered  ariother  studio.  Carolus-Dunm  was  probably 
the  best  master  that  he  could  have  had.  Conteniplating  some  of  his 
later  work,  especially  the  portraits  executed  in  America,  we  are  apt 
to  forget  what  a  superb  draftsman  lie  was  at  the  time  he  painted 
the  "  Femme  au  (lant  "  of  the  Luxembourg  or  the  "  Lady  with  the 
Dog  "  of  the  AUiseum  of  Lille;  but  in  addition  to  this  and  almost 
alone  aniong  the  artists  of  Paris  he  taught  painting  to  his  pupils. 
The  basis  of  instruction  was  not  an  infinitely  elaborated  charcoal 
drawing  of  the  nude  figure,  but  a  head  blocked  in  with  paint,  the 
great  construction  planes  kept  simple,  their  edges  meeting  in 
harsh,  straight  lines  in  the  work  of  the  beginners,  but  the  paint  laid 
on  thickly,  and  all  the  attention  concentrated  on  getting  the  just 
relations  of  mass,  tone,  and  color.  Not  until  this  had  been  done 
were  the  pupils  permitted  to  soften  the  edges  and  elaborate 
details. 

The  feeling  for  this  underlying  construction  in  form  and  tone 
Sargent  gained  thoroughly.  It  is  the  framework  unseen  but  all 
pervasi\-e  on  which  his  ])ictures  are  built,  and  differentiates  them 
absolutely  from  the  most  skilful  of  his  imitators.  To  this  must 
be  added  his  ease  in  the  mechanical  manipulation  of  paint  which 
would  be  encouraged  and  developed  by  the  teaching  and  example 
of  Carolus.  To  spread  great  surfaces  of  pure  clean  color,  to  touch 
on  them  lights  and  shades  and  details  with  a  flowing  brush,  but 
so  surely  and  firmly  that  they  lie  bright  and  clear  on  the  wet 
underpainting,  to  invent  strange  and  apparently  accidental  turns  of 
the  brush  that  give  effects  with  an  accuracy  beyond  the  reach  of  the 
most  persevering  labor,  —  all  this  is  of  his  nature.  The  beholder 
stands  in  delighted  bewilderment  as  before  a  juggler  more  mysti- 
f\ing  than  any  that  Lidia  or  lapan  has  produced.  To  other 
])ainters  such  dexterity  has  come,  if  at  all,  after  long  labor ;  but  it 
was  Sargent's  fi-om  the  first.  I  lis  ])ortrait  of  Carolus-I  )uran  with 
which  he  made  his  debut  was  hailed  as  a  masterpiece  of  cleverness, 
and  so  it  was;  but  alongside  of  the  "Girl  with  a  Rose"  that  followed, 


AMERICAN    ARTISTS    IN    LONDON  43 1 

it  seemed  labored  and  academic  —  as  if  he  had  been  hampered  by  his 
master's  presence.  It  is  the  only  one  of  his  works  that  looks  as  if 
it  might  have  been  done  bit  by  bit  and  worked  over ;  his  other 
canvases  have  the  air  of  absolute  spontaneity.  There  is  no  under- 
painting,  overpainting,  or  glazing,  there  is  no  heavy  body  color,  the 
paint,  made  fluid  with  oil  and  turpentine,  is  brushed  on  exactly  as 
it  should  be  and  left.  A  head  is  ordinarily  finished  in  a  single  sit- 
ting, for  the  purity  of  the  tone  must  not  be  impaired  by  alterations 
or  reworking. 

What  desperate  hard  work,  what  struggles  constantly  renewed  the 
artist  has  gone  through  that  he  might  paint  with  ease,  he  alone 
knows.  Traditions  tell  of  heads  painted  and  scraped  out  thirty  and 
forty  times,  of  portraits  that  required  countless  sittings,  but  in  the 
end  they  had  the  lightness  and  swiftness  of  a  sketch.  One  result  of 
this  method  is  the  ability  to  grasp  an  instantaneous  effect  and  render 
it  in  all  its  complexity.  In  "  El  Jaleo,"  one  of  his  earliest  pictures,  as 
well  as  in  other  Spanish  dances,  or  in  the  study  of  an  Egyptian  girl 
from  the  back  with  the  body  twisted  into  profile,  what  with  most 
men  would  have  been  mere  thumb-nail  sketches  became  life-size 
pictures.  But  the  power  is  more  important  when  it  is  less  obvious, 
when  it  catches  the  passing  expression  on  a  face  or  the  naturalness 
of  a  gesture  before  it  relapses  into  the  rigor  of  a  set  pose.  Take  the 
"  Girl  with  a  Rose"  just  mentioned,  the  arm  is  at  right  angles  to 
the  body,  —  a  position  that  could  not  be  held  for  a  moment  with- 
out fatigue ;  but  no  suggestion  of  fatigue  comes  to  the  spectator, 
because  he  recognizes  that  the  pose  is  but  momentary,  that  it  has 
just  been  taken,  and  that  the  hand  will  be  drawn  back  at  once. 
Almost  all  of  his  portraits  show  somewhere  the  same  effect,  —  in  the 
turn  of  the  head,  the  nervous  twisting  of  hands,  or  the  flow  of  a 
scarf,  —  and  it  helps  to  give  them  their  wonderful  vitality. 

Another  result  of  the  direct  fluent  painting  is  the  purity  and 
brilliancy  of  the  color.  Softness,  a  sort  of  indwelling  glow,  may  be 
obtained  by  glazing  and  manipulation,  but  nothing  else  is  as  bright 
as  pure  color  laid  on  a  clean  canvas  and  left  unmolested.  It  was, 
as  has  been  said,  a  time  of  examination  and  experimentation  in 
colors,  of  elaborate  investigation  and  discrimination  of  all  varieties 
of  lights  and  shadows,  of  tones  and  half-tones,  and  reflected  lights. 


432 


HIsrORV    OF   AMERICAN    rAIXTING 


It  tended  after  all  to  subtlety  rather  than  strength.  Titian  used 
throucrhout  his  life  the  same  reds  and  blues  to  dress  his  virfrins, 
just  as  Homer's  ships  are  always  black,  his  sea  wine-colored,  and 
his  Greeks  well-greaved  ;  but  the  complexity  of  nature  had  replaced 
the  simplicity  of  tradition.  Flaubert,  the  Goncourts,  Daudet, 
wrestled  over  the  ultimate  refinements  of  exactitude  in  the  choice  of 
words  as  the  painters  did  in  colors.  Sargent  was  of  his  time  and  as 
little  trammelled  by  tradition  as  Courbet,  and  his  craftsmanship  was 
even  better  though  entirely  different.  There  was  no  rich,  solid  im- 
pasto  plastered  on  with  the  palette  knife,  but  a  surface  of  iiuid  paint, 
in  spite  of  all  its  strength  and  richness,  thin  as  in  the  canvases  of 
Rubens,  or  more  exactly  Franz  Hals.  He  belonged  also  in  a  differ- 
ent social  class  than  Courbet,  but  he  looked  at  the  visible  world 
with  much  of  Courbet's  directness,  and  he  was  not  led  into  the 
excesses  of  men  like  Manet,  whose  originality  was  not  exempt  from 
pose.  He  was  a  portrait  painter,  too,  and  the  problems  of  the  open- 
air  school  did  not  affect  him  greatly,  but  from  the  prevailing  realism 
he  gained  a  freedom  from  prescribed  or  conventional  methods.  He 
had  no  fixed  scheme  to  which  all  heads  were  more  or  less  fitted, 
as  had  been  the  method  of  some  of  the  greatest  masters  of  the  past. 
The  shadows  were  not  uniformly  brown  or  even  warm,  and  the  half- 
tones had  all  the  infinite  variety  of  nature  with  a  special  clearness 
and  brightness  from  the  direct  workmanship.  The  same  influence 
extended  to  the  backgrounds,  which  were  neither  the  conventional 
dark  shadows  of  Bonnat  nor  the  carefully  composed"  tables  and  col- 
umns of  the  eighteenth  century,  but  the  actual  surroundings  of  the 
sitter,  the  walls  and  furniture  and  floor,  with  glimpses  of  other  rooms 
through  open  doors,  all  in  the  sharp  foreshortening  in  which  they 
were  seen,  varying  with  each  sitter  and  fitted  to  each  as  their  clothes 
or  their  gestures. 

But  the  triumph  of  realism  was  in  the  way  in  which  the  sitters 
themselves  were  comprehended.  "  Heraclitus  saith  well  in  one  of 
his  aenigmas,  'dry  light  is  ever  the  best.'"  Even  Lord  Bacon 
might  admit  that  the  maxim  is  not  so  generally  applicable  in  art 
as  in  life,  yet  Sargent  has  accepted  it  with  a  completeness  un- 
known since  Holbein,  and  even  Holbein  scarcely  saw  his  sitters 
in  a  light  so  little  "  infused  and  drenched  in  his  own   imagining." 


AMERICAN    ARTISTS   IN    LONDON  433 

The  older  master,  for  all  his  sineerity,  was  sympathetic;  but  before 
a  group  of  portraits  by  the  younger  man  we  wonder  whether  he 
cared  at  all  for  the  people  he  painted,  either  for  their  past  or 
future,  or  for  anything  except  the  moment  that  they  stood  before 
him  twiddling  their  watch-chains  or  spreading  their  fans.  Of  that 
moment,  though,  we  have  the  absolute  record,  and  a  terrible  one  it 
is  sometimes,  for  the  artist,  without  illusions  himself,  is  pitiless  for 
those  of  his  sitters.  If  a  lady  thinks  to  renew  by  artifice  the  fresh- 
ness of  her  youth,  she  appears  not  with  the  roses  and  lilies  of  nature 
on  her  face,  but  with  rouge  and  pearl  powder  manifest  and  unmis- 
takable ;  if  the  statesman  bends  his  brows  and  puffs  up  his  chest, 
he  is  displayed  not  as  a  thunderbolt  of  debate,  but  as  a  pompous  ass. 
An  adoring  family  wails  that  instead  of  their  young  goddess  they 
have  been  given  a  picture  of  a  Gibson  girl,  and  magnates  of  all  sorts 
hear  with  bewilderment  the  inferences  as  to  their  personal  characters 
which  an  enthusiastic  public  draws  from  their  counterfeit  present- 
ments. One  genial  moralist  has  even  had  his  faith  in  Providence 
strengthened  because  certain  of  the  great  of  this  world,  who  seemed 
beyond  the  reach  of  human  vengeance,  with  no  outside  duress'  or 
intimidation,  have  gone  to  Sargent  and  paid  considerable  sums  to 
have  their  likenesses  given  to  the  world. 

And  in  these  pictures,  even  the  most  terrible  of  them,  there  is  not 
a  grain  of  malice.  The  features  are  painted  as  dispassionately  as  the 
necktie  or  the  boots.  Nothing  is  caricatured  or  exaggerated,  but 
the  people  are  alive  and  demand  our  judgment  as  real  people.  Nor 
is  that  judgment  usually  hostile;  on  the  contrary  most  of  the  portraits 
awake  in  us  conflicting,  but  on  the  whole  favorable,  emotions,  and 
there  are  many  beautiful  women  and  high-bred  men  whom  it  is  a 
pleasure  to  have  met.  At  times  the  charm  is  strangely  intense  and 
personal.  When  a  year  or  so  ago  a  young  girl  died  just  as  she  was 
on  the  point  of  entering  society,  there  were  hundreds  who  felt  it  as 
a  private  bereavement  of  their  own,  though  they  knew  her  only  as 
the  little  wistful  child  in  the  portrait  with  the  parrot.  In  fact,  almost 
all  of  the  portraits  of  children  are  tender,  and  the  series  of  them  from 
the  Beit  children  in  the  hall  with  the  great  blue  and  white  vases 
down  to  those  of  the  present  day  is  of  wonderful  and  varied  charm. 
One  suspects  a  special  tenderness  toward  them;    but  even  in  the 


434  HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    I'AIMING 

soft  outlines  of  childhood  there  is  yet  the  discrimination  of  per- 
sonal character,  the  minute  details  that  make  the  individual  different 
from  all  the  rest  of  the  world. 

This  display  of  character  is  tlie  intellectual  quality  in  Sargent's 
work  to  which  all  of  his  technical  attainments  are  subordinated. 
When  an  artist  has  mastered  the  meaning  of  a  face,  he  may  try  to 
paint  it  dispassionately  and  exactly,  but  the  inner  nieaning  will  be 
more  vivid  to  the  ordinary  man  in  the  picture  than  in  the  flesh,  and 
no  one,  not  even  the  greatest  masters  of  the  jxist,  has  read  ordinary, 
everyday  character  as  minutely  and  completely  as  Sargent.  He  is 
not  profound.  He  does  not  touch  on  the  eternal  mysteries  or  try  to 
lav  bare  the  soul.  He  is  incurious  as  to  whether  his  sitters  have 
souls  or  what  will  be  their  future  state ;  but  as  to  this  present  com- 
monplace world  of  business  and  pleasure  he  is  full  of  the  iiiost  minute 
and  valuable  information.  He  tells  whether  they  are  pompous  or 
cordial  or  shy,  if  they  have  or  have  not  a  sense  of  humor,  whether 
they  are  nervous  or  stolid,  sensible  or  eccentric,  kindly  or  malicious. 
He  diagnoses  their  health,  shows  their  degree  of  education,  displays 
the  style  of  their  establishment,  and  suggests  approximately  their 
annual  expenditure. 

On  these  and  on  a  thousand  other  points  he  is  rarely  at  fault, 
and  some  of  the  deductions  drawn  from  his  portraits  by  utter 
strangers  are  amazing  in  accuracy.  His  portraits  of  public  men  are 
historical  documents  as  illuminative  as  the  most  elaborate  memoirs, 
and  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  the  political  situation  in  Europe 
would  be  clearer  to  us  to-day  if  he  had  painted  the  Czar;  but  no 
ruler  bv  divine  right  has  ever  sat  to  him,  wisely  perhaps  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  ruler;  for  it  is  doubtful  if  the  divine  right  would 
have  been  made  as  ])rominent  as  the  human  weaknesses,  and  yet 
posterity  will  regret  that  it  cannot  know  Queen  Victoria  or  the 
Emperor  William  with  the  same  intimacy  that  it  may  Tliomas 
Brackett  Reed,  for  instance,  also  once  upon  a  time  called  Czar. 

This  penetrative  analysis  of  character  is  not  confined  to  those 
whose  characters  are  important  or  distinguished.  It  is  lavished 
on  all  alike  and  even  on  inanimate  things,  the  silks  and  velvets,  the 
furniture  and  bric-a-brac  are  all  el()C|uent.  A  gleam  of  gold  in  the 
shadow  has  the  dusty  tone  that  proclaims  that  it  is  old  gilding  even 


FIG.  9^- SARGENT:    HENRY   G.   MARQUAND,    METROPOLITAN   MUSEUM. 


AMERICAN    ARTISTS   IN    LONDON  437 

though  its  form  is  indistinguislialjlc.  The  porcelain  in  the  Beit 
hall  is  evidently  not  in  the  same  class  with  that  behind  the  Misses 
Wertheimer.  The  i)ersonality  of  a  room,  of  a  i)lace,  is  given  abso- 
lutely and  unexpectedly.  Venice  has  been  painted  thousands  and 
tens  of  thousands  of  times,  —  the  canals,  the  Campanile,  the  Doges' 
Palace  and  St.  Mark's,  both  inside  and  out,  but  there  is  a  sketch 
by  Sargent  of  a  slatternly,  red-headed  girl  with  a  black  shawl  over 
her  head  coming  over  the  stones  of  a  shabby  little  street  that  is 
Venice  as  none  of  the  other  representations  are.  The  canals  may 
be  filled  up,  St.  Mark's  may  crumble  as  the  Campanile  has  done  ; 
but  as  long  as  the  race  and  the  climate  remain,  so  long  will  remain 
the  clear,  colorless  morbidezza  of  the  face,  the  limp,  clinging  skirts 
with  all  the  stiffness  taken  out  by  the  moist  sea  air,  and  the  gentle 
lassitude  of  the  loafers  leaning  against  the  wall  draped  in  their  dark 
cloaks.  The  curious  thing  is  that  while  the  picture  is  in  grays  and 
blacks,  without  a  single  bright  touch,  it  is  not  only  more  true  but 
infinitely  more  beautiful  in  color  than  the  customary  blaze  of  orange 
and  red ;  and  while  there  is  not  a  trace  of  old  carving  or  Gothic 
architecture,  yet  it  somehow  gives  the  grace  and  mystery  of  Venice 
as  Ruskin's  painfully  elaborated  drawings  do  not.  Sargent  has 
painted  but  few  canvases  of  this  kind  in  proportion  to  the  number 
of  his  portraits,  and  yet  set  apart  by  themselves  they  form  an  impor- 
tant group.  They  have  the  same  qualities  as  the  portraits,  they 
might  well  be  called  Portraits  of  Places,  but  not  official  portraits  nor 
of  "  show "  places.  They  are  intimate,  personal,  and  it  is  only  a 
passing  mood  that  is  noted,  the  sunlight  on  a  sea  beach,  the  spa- 
cious, shadowy  depths  of  an  Italian  palace  interior,  the  rosy  glow  of 
the  pink  shaded  candles  on  the  silver  and  linen  of  a  dinner  table, 
but  each  wonderfully  seen  and  rendered. 

Sargent's  work  has  its  Hmitations,  but  they  are  largely  set  by  its 
qualities.  If  a  transcript  of  life  is  to  be  made  vivid,  with  all  its 
changing  effects  struck  instantly  upon  the  canvas,  there  can  be  no 
brooding  and  musing  and  dreaming.  The  surface  of  the  paint 
is  smooth  and  flowing,  the  color  is  brilliant  and  pure,  but  neither 
have  that  absolute  and  subtle  perfection  that  comes  when  an  artist 
holds  a  canvas  by  him,  looks  at  it  long  and  often,  searching  it,  add- 
ing a  touch  here  and  a  glaze  there  with  loving  care  until  all  fuses 


43^  HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

into  unity.  Tlic  composition  likewise  has  no  such  absolute  perfec- 
tion. The  figures  are  usually  well  placed  and  well  grouped,  they 
fit  well  in  the  frames  ;  but  after  all  the  composition  is  taken  as  nature 
gave  it,  with  some  choice  from  different  jDoses  and  some  suiting  of 
the  dimensions  of  the  canvas  to  them,  but  no  weavin^•  of  li^ht  and 
shade,  line  and  spot,  into  a  complete  decorative  arrangement.  His 
portraits  rarely  have  distinction  in  their  patterning.  This  amounts 
about  to  saying  that  Sargent  is  not  Whistler.  It  has  already  been 
hinted  that  he  is  not  Rembrandt,  and  it  may  be  added  that  he  is  not 
Raphael.  It  is  even  possible  to  doubt  whether  he  is  Velasquez, 
though  both  he  and  Whistler  have  each  been  claimed  as  reincarna- 
tions of  that  master.  But  he  has  no  need  to  claim  a  reflection  of 
another  man's  qualities,  for  he  has  his  own  and  they  suffice. 

W^ith  a  certain  temperament  it  is  quite  permissible  to  dislike  his 
work,  as  it  is  permissible  to  dislike  the  work  of  Rubens;  but  with 
all  limitations  and  reserves  made,  he  has  talents  manifest  and 
unmistakable  that  give  him  securely  his  position  as  the  first  por- 
trait painter  since  Reynolds  and  Gainsborough, 


CHAPTER   XXIII 

RECENT   LANDSCAPE   PAINTING   IN    AMERICA 

Present  Development  of  Landscape  in  America.  —  Followers  of  Church  and 
Kensett.  —  W.  L.  PaLxMer,  E.  M.  Taper,  H.  Bolton  Jones,  R.  W.  Van  Boskerck. — 
Followers  of  Inness  and  the  Barbizon  Painters.  —  Louis  C.  Tiffany,  George 
Inness,  Jr.,  Charles  H.  Miller,  Robert  C.  Minor,  Charles  Melville  Dewey.— 
Blakelock,  Boger t,  Ranger.  —  Dearth,  F.  Ballard  Williams,  Dessar,  Will  S. 
Robinson,  Carleton  Wiggins.  —  Bunce,  Murphy,  Crane,  Birge  Harrison,  Snell, 
Coffin.  —  Picknell,  Donoho,  Davis.  —  Robinson,  W.  S.  Allen,  Twachtman, 
Hassam,  Metcalf.  —  Tryon,  Ochtman,  Appleton  Brown.  —  Ben  Foster,  W.  L. 
Lathrop.  —  Nettleton,  Potthast,  Walter  Clark.  —  Schofield,  Redfield. — 
Marine    Painters.  —  Eichelberger,  Kost,  Rehn,  Woodbury,  Chapman 

For  American  painters  residing  mainly  abroad  remoteness  in 
space  replaces  remoteness  in  time  and  gives  a  perspective  so  that 
it  is  possible  to  write  of  them  with  a  certain  dispassionate  detach- 
ment, which  is  aided  by  the  fact  that  there  are  not  so  many  of  them, 
their  aims  are  more  or  less  alike,  and  the  honors  for  which  all  have 
contended,  and  which  most  have  received,  in  some  measure  grade 
them  into  a  sort  of  hierarchy.  In  America,  while  the  number  doing 
work  good  enough  technically  to  entitle  it  to  serious  consideration 
is  naturally  much  greater,  formal  honors  like  medals  are  contended 
for  so  intermittently  and  awarded  on  such  varied  grounds  that  they 
do  not  settle  relative  rank.  Moreover,  less  stress  is  laid  here  than 
in  Europe  on  workmanship  and  more  on  sentiment,  the  indwelling 
emotion  which  may  be  felt,  but  its  quality  or  genuineness  is  hardly 
measurable  by  any  definite  standard.  There  is  a  certain  loose  union 
into  groups  resulting  from  similarities  of  training  or  temperament, 
but  quite  as  often  as  not  the  aflfiliations  are  impermanent  and  trace- 
able with  difficulty.  Under  such  conditions  criticism  becomes 
increasingly  difficult,  and  to  characterize  properly  any  artist  and  show 
how  he  varies  from  those  doing  similar  work  would  require  space  and 
reproductions  of  his  paintings  far  beyond  the  possibilities  of  a  book 
like    the    present.     The    most   that   can    be  done  is  some  general 

439 


440  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

characterization  of  the  groups,  with  reference  to  indixidiial   painters 
only  here  and  there  by  way  of  illustration. 

Of  the  recent  painters,  including  under  that  head  those  that  have 
come  forward  since  the  founding  of  the  Society  of  American  Artists 
the  only  ones  that  hold  at  all  to  the  traditions  of  the  American  past 
are  the  landscapists.  It  was  the  strongest  and  most  characteristic 
branch  of  the  old  school,  as  it  probably  is  of  the  new.  It  perfected 
itself  as  a  school  more  gradually  than  figure  painting,  feeling  and 
adapting  the  foreign  influences  earlier  and  more  naturally.  When 
the  figure  painters  returned  with  all  the  novel  and  revolutionary 
methods  of  the  Munich  and  Paris  schools,  men  like  Inness  and 
Martin  had  already  assimilated  the  inspiration  of  the  best  of  the 
French  masters  of  landscape,  but  they  had  assimilated  it  on  a  basis 
of  native  training  and  practice.  Even  the  younger  landscapists  went 
abroad  less  unprepared  and  spent  less  time  in  the  schools  than  the 
figure  painters.  In  this  way  they  got  less  out  of  touch  with  the 
taste  of  the  country,  and  for  a  long  time  they  were  the  only  painters 
to  enjoy  even  a  modest  popular  vogue. 

Already  in  the  seventies  the  American  landscape  school  was 
divided  more  or  less  between  the  men  who  painted  detail  and  those 
who  looked  for  broad  effects.  The  point  of  view  represented  by 
Church  had  practically  no  followers,  all  the  tendencies  of  the  time 
were  away  from  the  panoramic  arrangement  of  the  wonders  of 
nature ;  but  many  learned  the  methods  of  Church  or  Kensett  or 
Colman,  and  developed  them  —  men  like  Henry  A.  Ferguson, 
Joseph  Lyman,  or  j.  C.  Nicoll  whose  work  has  much  the  character- 
istics of  that  of  the  older  men.  Walter  L.  Palmer  was  even  a 
student  under  Church  and  shows  stronger  traces  of  his  early  dis- 
cipleship  than  of  his  later  one  under  Carolus-Duran.  It  is  not  that 
he  delights  in  icebergs  or  volcanoes,  or  that  he  seeks  out  the  strange- 
ness of  the  tropics  or  the  glories  of  Greece ;  but  all  the  minute  detail 
that  his  eye  can  see  interests  him,  and  he  does  not  fail  to  reproduce 
it.  He  has  painted  most  forms  of  landscape,  including  many  views 
of  Venice,  but  he  has  made  the  winter  with  its  snows  his  especial 
province.  It  is  not  the  snow  of  Europe  damply  evaporating  into  a 
leaden  sky,  but  the  New  hjigland  article,  crisp  and  dry  in  the  keen 
cold  and  shininc;:  dazzlinir  white  asainst  the  blue  horizon.     All  the 

o  c>  o 


RECENT    LANDSCAPi«:    PAINTING    IN    AMERICA 


443 


resources  of  the  open-air  school  are  resorted  to  in  order  to  get  the 
exact  tone  of  the  shadows  and  keep  them  keyed  up  to  their  natural 
brilliancy  and  yet  have  a  higher,  brighter  note  for  the  sunlit  snow 
itself.  This  brilliancy  is  given  perhaps  better  than  by  any  one  else, 
and  yet  detail  is  pushed  to  the  ultimate  point  of  elaboration,  every 
twig  or  track  in  the  snow  has  the  sharpness  and  completeness  of 
nature. 

This  crystalline  clearness  of  our  winter  air  we  share  with  Norway 
and  Sweden,  to  judge  by  the  works  of  their  painters ;  but  it  is  not 
common  elsewhere  in  Europe,  and  we  get  no  formulas  for  rej^resent- 


r'lG.  95.  —  H.  BoLioN  Jones:  Spring,  Metropolitan  Mtskim. 

ing  it.  In  this  way  Palmers  work  is  original  and  equally  original 
was  that  of  E.  M.  Taber,  who  painted  not  only  the  immediate  fore- 
ground but  the  distant  Vermont  mountains  on  the  days  when  every 
rock  and  tree  shows  sharp  and  clear  though  miles  away.  He  ana- 
lyzed the  forms  and  the  shifting  tints  of  sapphire  and  amethyst 
with  infinite  delicacy  and  feeling  and  with  a  handling  peculiarly 
his  own,  —  smooth,  solid,  and  minute.  It  seemed  as  if,  had  not 
an  untimely  death  intervened,  he  might  have  developed  the  art  of 
Kensett  into  something  finer,  more  responsive  to  our  own  climate 
and  land  than  has  yet  been  done.  Something  of  this  same  com- 
pleteness of  finish  is  also  characteristic  of  H.  Bolton  Jones,  although 


444  HISTORY    OF    AMERICAN    PAIXTIXO 

the  seasons  whicli  appeal  to  him  are  the  summer  and  especially  the 
sprinc^  with  its  fresh  bright  greens  and  the  delicate  tints  of  the 
budding  trees.  The  interest  in  all  the  minutia'  of  nature  which 
characterized  the  old  Hudson  River  school  is  there,  but  the  execution 
is  surer  and  more  artistic,  and  the  coloring  in  its  truthfulness  and 
delicacy  and  in  the  absence  of  the  brown  studio  tones  shows  the 
influence  of  the  French  open-air  school. 

Allied  to  the  older  work  also,  both  by  their  completeness  of 
finish  and  by  their  frank  and  unaffected  enjoyment  of  prettiness, 
are  the  pictures  of  R.  W.  Van  Boskerck  with  their  tranc|uil  streams, 
great  trees,  white  cottages,  and  calm  summer  skies  with  rosy  clouds. 
There  is  a  direct  connection,  too,  for  Van  Boskerck  was  a  pupil  of 
Wyant ;  but  the  pupil  does  not  seek  the  delicate,  rather  melancholy 
sentiment  of  the  master.  The  grass  and  flowers  shine  bright  in  the 
sunlight,  cheerfulness  is  over  all ;  but  for  all  their  prettiness  the  planes 
of  the  pictures  hold  together  with  absolute  solidity. 

In  contrast  to  these  men  with  their  completeness,  their  clarity, 
their  occasional  hardness,  are  the  followers  of  George  Fuller  or  of 
Inness,  who  seek  a  richer  harmony  of  color,  a  more  decorative  com- 
position, and  a  unity  of  effect  less  broken  by  insistent  details.  Some 
of  these  were  pupils  of  the  older  men.  Louis  C.  Tiffany,  for  instance, 
was  a  pupil  of  Inness,  but  his  work  shows  more  traces  of  his  other 
masters,  —  Samuel  Colman  and  Leon  Belly.  There  was,  in  fact,  much 
of  Col  man's  love  of  warm,  pure  color  in  his  paintings  in  transparent 
wash  or  in  gouache  on  rough  straw  board,  of  Italian  or  Mexican 
scenes  that  used  to  light  up  the  early  exhibitions  of  the  Water  Color 
Society,  the  firmness  of  outline  and  energy  of  drawing  being 
probably  the  result  of  the  French  training.  Like  La  Farge,  how- 
ever, and  even  more  than  La  P^arge,  of  late  years  Tiffany's  love  of 
beautiful  color  has  diverted  his  energies  from  painting  to  glass 
and  enamels  and  similar  fields  of  decorative  art,  so  that  now  his 
pictures  and  even  cartoons  for  stained  glass  are  infreciuent,  though 
in  exchange  the  beauties  of  the  "  Favrile  "  glass  are  admired  through- 
out the  art-loving  world. 

While  Tiffany  numbered  Inness  among  his  instructors,  he  never 
followed  his  methods  or  style  closely.  George  Inness,  Jr.,  however, 
can  at  times  paint  in  a  way  almost  deceptively  resembling  his  father's 


RECENT    LANDSCAPE   PAINTING   IN    AMERICA  445 

later  work.  There  is  the  same  soft,  rich  haze  of  color  with  the  light 
glowing  through  it.  And  if  the  son  lias  somewhat  less  of  rigid  under- 
lying construction  in  his  landscapes,  in  the  figures  and  animals  that 
he  introduces  (and  which  latter  are  important  enough  to  give  him  a 
right  to  rank  as  an  animal  painter  as  well  as  a  landscapist),  there  is  a 
fuller,  more  complete  draftsmanship.  The  group  of  horse  and  man 
dashing  into  the  breakers  in  the  "  Surf  Horse,"  in  its  vigor  and  firm- 
ness, seems  traceable  to  his  short  stay  in  the  Bonnat  atelier  ox  at  least 
to  the  general  influence  of  his  studies  abroad. 

Not  many  men,  though,  were  actually  pupils  of  Inness,  and  his 
name  is  rather  used  to  characterize  a  certain  class  of  work  some- 
what resembling  his.  In  some  cases  the  resemblance  came  from 
direct  admiration,  but  quite  as  often  from  following  similar  mod- 
els, usually  the  "  Barbizon  "  landscapes ;  and  sometimes  only  from 
a  similar  liking  for  warm  tone,  richness  of  surface,  and  unity  of 
composition  that  fitted  the  canvas  into  the  frame  and  gave  a 
decorative  quality  to  the  whole.  One  of  the  earliest  of  this  group, 
Charles  H.  Miller,  was  born  as  far  back  as  1842,  and  his  training 
was  mostly  German.  He  brought  the  browns  of  Munich  into 
his  landscapes,  but  not  with  the  broad,  sweeping  brush  work  of 
Shirlaw.  In  spite  of  Munich,  Vienna,  Leipsic,  Berlin,  Dresden,  and 
Paris,  in  all  of  which  places  he  studied,  he  belongs  with  the  older 
school,  and  also  returned  to  the  country  earlier  than  most,  and  was 
an  A.N.A.  in  1873. 

Robert  C.  Minor  was  older  by  two  years  than  Miller,  but  he 
came  under  different  influences.  He  studied  under  Diaz,  as  well 
as  at  Antwerp  and  elsewhere,  and  his  pictures  retained  to  the  last 
something  of  Diaz'  composition  in  his  massing  of  light  and  shade. 
Charles  Melville  Dewey,  on  the  contrary,  was  self-taught,  yet  his 
pictures  have  much  in  common  with  Minor's, — the  same  liking  for 
the  subdued  light  of  morning  and  evening,  the  same  tree  masses  dark 
against  the  sky,  the  depth  and  mistiness  of  the  twilight  foliage,  and 
the  glow  of  the  twilight  sky.  It  was  the  picture  of  sentiment  so 
called.  There  were  many  more  artists  doing  work  of  the  same 
general  type  and  often  doing  it  extremely  well,  with  truth  and  feel- 
ing, though  in  weak  hands  it  had  a  tendency  to  degenerate  into  the 
formlessness  common  to  weak  sentimentality  all  over  the  world.     It 


446 


HISTORY  OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 


represented  one  side  of  the  Fontainebleau  sehool,  having  especially 
a  strong  infusion  of  Corot.  It  was  tlie  softer,  more  emotional  side,  but 
there  was  another.  The  followers  of  Minor  or  Dewey  might  imitate 
Diaz  or  Rousseau  in  the  massing  of  liglits  and  shades,  but  there  was 
no  attempt  to  reproduce  the  full  strength  of  their  color,  the  solidity 
of  their  brush  work,  and  the  rich,  lacquer-like  quality  of  their  surfaces. 


Fig.  96.  —  Ranger:   Mason's  Island  Classic. 
[Photographed  by  Curtis  Bell.] 


This  (luestion  of  texture,  of  using  pigment  and  varnish  so  that 
they  should  be  beautiful  in  themselves,  counted  for  little  with  the 
earlier  bmdseape  men.  Inness  and  some  others  achieved  it  as  a  sort 
of  by-product,  without  a})parently  giving  much  thought  to  it.  Ryder 
and  bullcr  began  to  treat  matter  as  c|uite  as  important  as  ideas,  or 
rather  to  have  ideas  that  recpiired  glazings  and  \-arnisliings  to  express. 
Often  the  idea  (an  emotional  not  an  intellectual  idea)  lay  in  transpar- 
ent brown  shadows,  spots  of  color  or  interesting  patterns  rather  than 
in  an\'  accurate  transcript  of  nature,  and  sometimes  in  Rvders  work, 
and  still  more  in  that  of  a  man   like    Blakelock,  the  component  ele- 


RECENT   LANDSCAPE    PAINTING   IN    AMERICA 


447 


mcnts,  tlic  trees  and  rocks  and  streams,  had  been  so  adapted  by  the 
artist  to  his  purpose  as  to  resemble  their  prototypes  in  nature  only 
suggestively,  somewhat  as  a  heraldic  lion  resembles  a  real  one.  Blake- 
lock  is  an  extreme  example,  but  there  are  canvases  by  Bogert  and 
Ranger  and  the  others  where  the  concept  of  a  tree  seems  to  have 
been  founded  on  the  representation  of  trees  in  other  pictures  rather 
than  on  the  green,  leafy,  growing  reality,  and  clouds  have  had  a  dark- 
ness that  completed  the  composition,  but  scarcely  agreed  with  the 
ordinary  laws  of  light. 

Such  unveracities,  however,  are  not  common,  and  are  men- 
tioned simply  to  show  that  to  the  mind  of  the  painters  it  was 
more  important  to  have  an  effective  picture  than  a  literal  tran- 
script of  nature.  This  is  almost  the  only  tie  between  the  two  men 
whose  names  have  been  mentioned.  Bogert  has  clone  a  great  amount 
of  work,  most  varied,  not  only  in  subject  (landscapes,  marines,  views 
of  cities  chosen  from  all  over  the  world),  but  also  in  handling  and  in 
color  scheme.  Ranger  holds  more  closely  to  the  New  England  hill- 
sides and  autumn  woods,  but  with  a  steadily  increasing  development 
both  of  skill  and  feeling,  so  that  his  later  canvases  are  not  only  a 
more  beautiful  pattern  of  golden  or  russet  masses  than  the  earlier, 
but  also  a  more  intimate  and  exact  rendering  of  the  spirit  of  the 
woods.  Both  at  their  best  have  done  work  which  will  stand  in  any 
company  of  their  contemporaries,  and  the  same  may  be  said  of  Henry 
G.  Dearth,  of  F.  Ballard  Williams,  of  Louis  Paul  Dessar,  of  Will  S. 
Robinson,  or  of  Carleton  Wiggins.  This  lumping  of  names  together 
in  a  class,  though  of  necessity  it  must  frequently  be  resorted  to  in 
this  and  the  succeeding  chapters,  is  unjust  and  unsatisfactory.  There 
is  a  certain  similarity  in  the  men  mentioned  above.  They  all  paint 
the  decorative  landscape,  rather  low  in  key,  rich  in  color,  and  with 
the  paint  laid  on  solidly  and  with  a  pleasant,  though  varied,  sur- 
face, but  there  is  no  further  resemblance.  The  works  of  each  are  dis- 
tinct, unmistakable  for  those  of  any  of  the  others.  There  is  not  even 
such  similarity  as  there  is  between  the  canvases  of  Rousseau,  Diaz, 
and  Dupre.  Each  has  his  own  personal  view-point  apart  from  the 
question  of  execution,  and  the  twilights  and  moonlights  of  Dearth 
vary  no  more  in  sentiment  from  the  idyllic  note  of  Williams  than 
they  do  from  the  gravity  of  Wiggins,  the  broad,  sweeping  lines  of 


448 


HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 


whose  landscapes  call   up  vague  memories  of  men  like  Old  Crome 
or  some  of  their   Dutch  prototypes. 

Allied  to  these  by  their  sense  of  tone  and  tint,  but  more  delicate, 
less  robust,  delighting  in  broad  stretches  of  finely  modulated  color 
rather  than  in  vigorous  patterning,  is  another  group  equally  dissim- 
ilar among  themselves,  but  whose  tendencies  may  be  suggested  by 
the  names  of  W.  Gedney  Bunce,  J.  Francis  Murphy,  Bruce  Crane, 
Birge   Harrison,   Henry  B.  Snell,  and  William  A.  Coiihn.      Bunce 


Fig.  97.  —  TwACHTMAN  :  Snow  Sckne. 

would  seem  as  a  connecting  link  between  the  two;  for  while  his 
"  Venetian  Sails  "  or  "  Fishing  Boats,"  or  whatever  he  calls  the  myriad 
repetitions  of  his  favorite  theme,  maybe  founded  on  long  and  patient 
watching  of  the  shifting  tints  of  sky  and  water,  and  frequently 
reproduce  them  with  delicacy  and  veracity,  yet  there  are  other  times 
when  facts  are  used  simply  as  a  basis  for  elaborating  subtle  and 
beautiful  color  schemes  which  nature  would  find  difficulty  in  dupli- 
cating. Like  the  preceding  group,  it  is  the  picture  that  interests 
him,  not  the   subject,  the  harmonies  that  he  discovers   himself    and 


RECENT    LANDSCAPE    PAINTING    IN    AMERICA 


449 


works  out  with  thin,  transparent  washes  of  tinted  varnish  over  the 
surface  of  the  panel.  It  is  this  preponderance  of  the  decorative 
element  that  allies  Bunce  to  men  like  Ranger  or  Dearth,  but  in 
the  simplicity  of  his  composition  (usually  little  more  than  two 
approximately  equal  bands  of  sea  and  sky  interrupted  by  a  group 
of  boats),  as  also  in  his  lack  of  heavy  impasto,  he  resembles  rather 
Murphy  and  Crane.  But  these  latter  men,  however  much  they  seek  to 
make  beautiful  pictures,  are  not  content  to  venture  far  beyond  effects 
and  tones  for  which  nature  herself  gives  them  warrant.  The  hill- 
sides of  Murphy  may  perhaps  have  a  tinge  of  brown,  pleasing  rather 
than  exact ;  but  that  is  his  single  weakness,  and  in  the  ploughed 
fields  of  Crane,  with  their  violet  tones  and  in  his  stretches  of  farming 
land,  whether  parched  by  summer  or  covered  with  winter  snow,  the 
veracity  is  manifest.  The  same  may  be  said  of  the  snow  scenes  of 
Birge  Harrison,  softer  in  their  morning  or  evening  light  than  those 
of  Palmer,  less  crisp  and  sparkling,  and  of  the  marines  of  Snell,  misty 
and  gentle,  or  of  Cofifin's  Pennsylvania  landscapes.  In  this  last  case 
the  strong  greens  of  summer,  the  cold  gray  of  the  rain,  the  raw  brill- 
iancy of  the  sunset  clouds,  are  seen  with  a  peculiar  personal  and 
uncompromising  directness  and  simplicity  which  are  true  but  hardly 
"  tonal  "  like  the  others,  and  put  them  rather  in  a  class  by  themselves. 
This  "  tonal  "  quality  which  runs  through  so  much  American 
landscape  work  that  it  has  become  a  sort  of  descriptive  epithet  of  a 
school  is  not  uncommon  abroad.  It  came  originally  from  the  study 
of  the  Barbizon  masters  and  similar  works,  and  it  has  always  been 
influenced  by  foreign  examples ;  but  in  no  other  country  has  it  affected 
any  such  proportion  of  the  landscape  work  as  in  America.  And 
nowhere  else  is  the  attempt  so  general  to  infuse  personal  feeling  into 
the  copying  of  nature.  To  any  one  who  compares  from  this  point  of 
view  exhibitions  abroad  with  those  in  this  country  the  contrast  is 
striking.  Even  in  France,  whence  the  impulse  so  largely  came,  most 
men  content  themselves  with  a  skilful  transcript  of  the  facts  and 
let  the  beholder  furnish  his  own  emotions.  To  do  this  demands 
perhaps  a  surer,  stronger  workmanship  than  when  sympathy  may 
be  expected  to  dim  the  critical  sense ;  but  it  was  probably  not  the 
lack  of  skill  so  much  as  of  public  appreciation  which  diverted  the 
painters  from  the  more  literal  rendering.     Works  like  the  "  Route 

2  G 


450 


HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 


de  Concarneau "  of  William  L.  Pickncll  or  "La  Marcclleric  "  of 
Ruger  Donoho  are  fully  up  to  the  best  Salon  standards,  the  latter 
especially  being  beautifully  painted,  but  it  is  noticeable  that  they  were 
both  done  in  I'rance. 

Perhaps  the  strong,  simple  landscape  work  of  Carlsen  may  find 
its  place  here  as  well  as  elsewhere.  It  has  the  quality  of  his  still- 
life  studies  of  game  or  fish  ;  broad,  unbroken  masses  of  color  strongly 
relieved  against  each  other  whether  sunlit  trees  against  a  deep  blue 
skv  or  a  white  swan  against  a  dead  wall,  the  contrast  not  being 
relied  on  alone  for  the  effect,  but  the  color  being  made  as  absolutely 
true  as  in  less  vigorous  work.  Other  men,  notably  Charles  H. 
Davis,  have  brought  similar  direct  vision  and  workmanship  back 
from  the  Paris  ateliers,  but  they  have  usually  developed  more  in 
accord  with  a  popular  taste  that  knows  too  little  about  sound 
workmanship  to  enjoy  and  buy  it  on  its  own  account. 

Another  Parisian  movement,  however,  the  so-called  impression- 
ism, was  imposed  by  the  artists  upon  a  decidedly  recalcitrant  com- 
munity. It  was  opposed  to  the  solid  Salon  work  just  described, 
and  yet  it  had  at  least  one  quality  in  common  with  it,  — the  lack  of 
sentimentality.  As  a  rule,  the  painters  cared  for  the  actual  things 
which  they  represented  nothing  at  all.  They  were  interested  in  the 
play  of  light  and  shade,  but  what  the  light  and  shade  played  on 
was  a  matter  of  indifference.  Monet  painted  his  haystack  and  his 
cathedrals  dozens  of  times  in  pink  or  purple  or  gold,  caring  much  for 
the  shifting  film  of  color,  but  not  for  the  stack  or  church  that  it  lay 
upon.  Not  thus  did  Daubigny  or  Millet  work,  but  somewhat  so 
worked  most  of  the  Americans  that  followed  the  new  light. 

This  is  not  the  place  to  analyze  the  principles  of  the  school.  Its 
chief  innovations  were  the  extremely  high  key  in  which  the  pictures 
were  painted  in  order  to  reproduce  the  brilliancy  of  the  open  air,  the 
careful  study  of  tints  of  light  and  shadow,  so  that  their  opposition 
might  be  given  as  much  as  possible  by  contrast  of  color  without 
strong  darks,  and  a  peculiar  broken  handling  composed  of  touches  of 
pure  color  which  was  to  give  at  once  the  vibration  and  the  brilliancy 
of  sunlight.  It  took  on  some  eccentric  forms,  and  as  a  separate 
revolutionary  movement  it  has  largely  died  out;  but  almost  all 
modern  art  shows  something  of  its  influence.     It  appealed  particu- 


HG.  9S.  — IIASSAM:     1.AM)>LA1 


RECENT   LANDSCAPE   PAINTING    IN    AMERICA  453 

larly  to  the  Americans  studying  in  Paris  in  the  eighties,  and  among 
them  are  found  some  of  its  most  brilliant  practitioners.  Theodore 
Robinson  was  a  pupil  and  friend  of  ^h)net  himself,  and  toward  the 
end  of  his  short  life  perfected  a  method  of  work  sure,  brilliant,  and 
original,  and  about  the  same  time  William  Sullivant  Allen  produced 
a  series  of  studies  of  Fontainebleau  and  the  neighborhood  charming 
in  their  delicacy  of  color  and  a  certain  odd  originality  of  composition. 

These  men  did  not  remain  in  France,  but  returned  to  Amer- 
ica and  with  them  returned  others  like  Willard  L.  Metcalf,  John 
H.  Twachtman,  Childe  Hassam,  and  Robert  Reid.  J.  Alden  Weir 
would  also  find  a  place  here,  if  he  had  not  already  been  mentioned 
among  the  founders  of  the  Society  of  American  Artists.  While  they 
all  belong  to  the  same  school  they  paint  no  more  like  each  other 
than  the  "tonalists."  Twachtman  was  the  most  delicately  sensitive 
of  the  group,  unequal,  varying  in  execution,  sometimes  elaborating, 
sometimes  leaving  his  canvas  partially  bare,  but  always  with  a  feel- 
ing for  2:race,  for  variations  and  contrasts  of  tint.  The  work, 
although  differing  entirely  in  key  and  color  scheme,  yet  resembles 
Whistler's  in  its  analysis  of  the  subtle  nuances  of  tone,  impercep- 
tible save  to  the  most  delicately  trained  eye.  Hassam  is  robuster, 
surer,  with  a  less  varying  technique  and  one  that  with  its  dry 
touches  of  pure,  contrasting  colors  comes  nearest  to  what  is  con- 
sidered typical  of  the  school ;  and  in  his  work  (landscapes,  street 
scenes,  and  interiors  with  figures)  he  shows  how  well  it  adapts  itself 
to  all  requirements.  Its  quality  is  shown  when  it  is  contrasted  with 
Metcalfs  handling,  the  subjects  are  often  similar  and  painted  in  the 
same  out-of-door  key  of  color ;  but  Metcalf  lays  on  his  paint  smoothly, 
thinly,  so  that  the  characteristic  vibration  is  lacking  and  is  replaced 
by  a  stiller,  quieter  surface  which  takes  the  work  out  of  the  strict 
impressionist  school. 

This  same  smooth  surface  was  also  common  to  the  work  of 
Charles  A.  Piatt  before  his  desertion  of  painting  for  decoration 
and  architecture,  but  in  his  case  brilliancy,  or  at  least  interest,  is 
given  by  handling  the  thin,  fluid  paint  with  something  of  the  free- 
dom of  water-color.  The  subjects,  too,  the  stretches  of  Vermont  or 
New  Hampshire  hills,  are  treated  with  sympathy  and  understanding, 
and  their  native   character,  whether  covered   with  winter  snow   or 


454  HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAIXTIXG 

spotted  with  the  blue  shadows  of  the  summer  clouds,  is  truthfully 
reproduced.  The  coloring  is  true  to  out-of-door  light  and  with  its 
freedom  from  brown  tones  was  considered  rather  an  innovation 
when  the  pictures  were  painted ;  but  such  coloring  has  now  become 
rather  the  rule  than  the  exception.  The  critics  would  class  it  as 
even  less  impressionistic  than  Metcalf's,  yet  it  shows  the  influence 
of  Monet  as  well  as  of  Bastien-Le  Page. 

This  complete  adaptation  and  assimilation  of  the  new  theories 
and  methods,  developed  in  Paris  during  the  seventies,  so  that  they 
might  be  applied  to  the  rendering  of  the  spirit  of  American  scenery 
naturally  and  without  trace  of  their  foreign  derivation,  culminated 
in  a  group  of  men  like  Tryon,  Ochtman,  J.  Appleton  Brown,  who 
stand  somewhat  in  the  place  that  Inness  and  Homer  D.  Martin 
occupied  twenty  years  or  so  before.  They  are  not  as  yet  such 
commanding  or  such  isolated  figures,  and  it  is  not  possible  to  tell 
what  consecration  time  may  bring.  While  they  are  spoken  of  as 
having  received  foreign  influence,  it  is  not  so  manifest  as  in  the 
case  of  those  classed  among  the  impressionists.  They  followed  only 
indirectly  the  plein-air  school,  whose  inspiration  was  hardly  so 
noble  or  so  purely  artistic  as  that  of  Rousseau,  Daubigny,  or  Corot, 
but  was  mixed  up  with  a  desire  to  innovate,  with  scientific  theories 
of  light,  and  with  the  exigencies  of  exhibitions.  It  is  with  the  earlier 
men  that  the  artists  under  consideration  are  in  sympathy.  They 
studied  and  admired  their  works  (Tryon  was  even  a  student  of 
Daubigny),  but  they  expressed  themselves  in  manners  modified  by 
the  later  practice.  They  carried  on  the  best  inspiration  of  the 
earlier  American  school. 

More  than  his  direct  followers  and  imitators,  Tryon  is  the  suc- 
cessor of  Inness.  Not  that  their  work  is  alike.  Even  in  his  earlier 
paintings,  which  were  apt  to  be  brown  and  dark,  Tryon  shows  no 
special  resemblance  to  his  predecessor;  but  they  both  paint  Ameri- 
can landscape  with  deep,  personal  feeling  and  with  a  tcchniqtie 
complete,  original,  and  modern.  The  temperament  expressed  is 
not  the  same.  It  is  easy  (when  once  we  know  the  fact)  to  trace 
the  mystic,  sj)iritua]  side  of  Inness  in  all  his  work.  The  vision 
is  seized  and  drawn  into  constructive  lines  and  planes,  firmly, 
sanely,  but  yet  in   neglected  corners  the  picture  has  a  tendency  to 


RPXENT   LANDSCAPE    PAINTING    IN    AMERICA  457 

remain  mysterious  and  elusive.  In  Tryon's  work,  on  the  contrary, 
the  poetry  is  built  upon  the  solid  fact.  Rocks,  groves,  streams,  and 
sky  are  knit  together  as  firmly  and  logically  as  a  proposition  of 
Euclid  ;  but  on  this  reality  he  begins  to  work  with  mists  and  shifting 
lights  and  feathery  spring  foliage  until  it  almost  disappears  under 
the  shimmering  web  of  poetry  that  he  has  wrapped  about  it,  yet 
underneath  still  lie  the  stone  walls  and  the  gray  ridges  of  New 
England  rock  ready  to  emerge  in  all  their  uncompromising  strength 
the  instant  that  the  east  wind  sweeps  up  the  enveloping  veil.  In 
spite  of  this  greater  solidity  of  foundation  the  spirit  is  more  delicate, 
less  robust,  than  with  Inness.  There  are  no  mighty  oaks,  no  whirl- 
ing thunder  clouds,  no  glowing  color.  The  trees  are  slender,  deli- 
cate, with  something  of  the  adolescent  grace  of  the  Early  Renaissance 
sculptures,  and  they  are  not  collected  in  solid  masses,  but  stretch 
across  the  picture  in  a  diaphanous  line  only  kept  from  monotony  by 
the  delicate  differentiation  of  detail,  the  individuality  of  the  trunks, 
the  spots  of  light  breaking  through,  the  varied  line  of  their  tops. 
The  color  is  kept  within  one  milky,  luminous  tone  that  softens  and 
transmutes  whatever  more  violent  tints  may  lie  beneath  to  something 
in  harmony,  though  there  is  no  monotony.  It  is  not  a  messing 
together  of  warring  colors  into  one  soiled  monotone  but  each  is 
pure  and  distinct  for  all  its  delicacy. 

The  harmony  is  as  great,  though  the  contrasts  are  stronger, 
in  the  autumn  scenes  of  Ochtman  whose  rolling  hills  and  wood- 
lands have  an  ampler  composition  and  a  graver,  less  lyric  note,  —  a 
difference  not  inherent  in  the  seasons,  for  both  men  are  alike  painters 
of  the  spring  and  autumn,  but  in  their  temperaments.  Ochtman 
achieves  most  when  he  attempts  most.  His  larger  canvases  differ 
not  only  by  their  size,  but  they  are  also  more  finely  balanced  in 
composition,  more  subtle  and  refined  in  color,  more  profound  in 
feeling  than  the  smaller  ones,  which  are  apt  to  be  direct  studies  from 
nature,  skilful  and  varied,  but,  from  the  very  ease  with  which  they 
reproduce  the  subject,  lacking  in  the  emotional  quality  which  the 
artist  puts  into  a  picture  by  repeated  labor.  The  smaller  canvases 
of  Tryon,  on  the  contrary,  have  a  sentiment  as  fine  and  as  complete 
as  the  greater. 

More  broadly  treated  and  more  gayly,  but  with  a  gayety  which 


458  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

had  always  its  air  of  distinction  and  breeding,  were  the  spring  and 
summer  landscapes  of  J.  Appleton  Brown,  with  their  sunny  clouds 
in  the  soft  blue  sky,  their  green  meadows,  and  the  pink  and 
white  of  their  blossoming  fruit  trees.  They  do  not  resemble  Corot, 
but  there  is  a  touch  of  his  inspiration  in  them,  and  Brown  was  a 
fervent  admirer  of  the  older  master  and  caught  something  of  the 
charm  of  his  misty  skies;  but  his  handling  was  smooth  and  broad, 
and  his  pictures  stand  a  little  by  themselves  in  their  apparent  ease 
of  execution  and  their  light,  opaque  color,  which  suggests  some 
perfected  kind  of  gouache. 

Here,  too,  belong  the  series  of  moonlights  by  Ben  Foster, 
with  the  mysteries  of  their  enveloping  hazes  and  shadows,  and 
his  autumn  hillsides  and  rolling  waves;  and  here  should  come  in 
the  works  of  many  other  men,  for  the  group  represents  the  general 
tendency  of  our  art  to  copy  American  landscape  according  to 
methods  assimilated  from  foreign  (mainly  French)  practice.  Even 
men  like  Murphy  and  Crane  might  be  included.  A  distinction  has 
been  attempted  in  their  case  on  the  ground  that  the  obtaining  of 
a  decorative  quality  in  the  canvas  seems  by  them  to  be  held  more 
important  than  the  rendering  of  the  spirit  of  nature,  but  the  dis- 
tinction is  obscure  and  no  fixed  line  can  be  drawn.  The  men  cited 
above  as  representative  have  been  chosen  rather  more  for  the  beauty 
and  diversity  of  sentiment  shown  in  their  works  than  for  their 
technical  skill. 

A  considerable  degree  of  skill  is  becoming  fairly  common,  and 
incompetent  work  is  generally  recognized  as  such.  There  is  a 
mass  of  pictures  painted  each  year  not  only  respectable  from  the 
training  and  application  of  their  authors,  but  worthy  of  serious 
consideration  for  their  beauty  and  artistic  merit,  often  little  if  at 
all  inferior  to  the  works  mentioned.  They  represent  all  shades  of 
feeling,  sentimental  or  literal.  Each  favorite  artist  has  his  imitators 
and  there  is  some  seeking  among  our  American  hills  and  groves  for 
effects  like  those  admired  in  the  works  of  the  masters  of  France;  but 
there  is  also  much  painting  of  our  landscape  with  the  sincerity  of 
the  old  native  school,  but  with  a  greater  skill  by  men  like  W.  L. 
LathrojD,  for  instance,  who,  in  some  of  his  work  at  least,  does  not 
avoid  the  dry,  clear  light  and  the  irregular,  uncentralized  heaping 


RECENT   LANDSCAPE    PAINTING    IN    AMERICA  46 1 

together  of  our  hills.  Greater  possibilities  in  this  direction  seem 
hinted  at  by  certain  tentative  essays  that  have  never  been  pushed 
to  their  ultimate  development  —  things  like  some  of  the  early  land- 
scapes of  La  Farge  or  the  wintry  mountains  of  Taber.  Some  day 
perhaps  the  predestined  man  may  come  and  give  us  a  new  school 
as  Constable  or  Rousseau  did,  some  one  who  can  adapt  Whistler's 
color  to  a  draftsmanship  like  Van  Eyck's,  or  do  something  of  the 
sort. 

At  present  the  tendency  is  rather  toward  strength  both  of  con- 
ception and  execution  than  subtlety.  Walter  Nettleton,  Edward 
H.  Potthast,  Walter  Clark,  all  alike  see  nature  frankly  and  paint  her 
with  a  sure,  solid  handling,  rich  and  harmonious  in  color  —  some  of 
Nettleton's  snow  scenes  deserving  a  special  mention.  The  same 
may  be  said  of  Charles  Warren  Eaton  and  Frank  Russell  Green, 
though  their  color  is  softer  and  sweeter  and  they  prefer  the  evening 
light  to  the  blaze  of  midday ;  while  Elmer  W.  Schofield  and  Edward 
W.  Redfield  bring  in  a  different,  a  more  up-to-date  element.  They 
both  lay  on  their  pigment  in  broad,  firm  touches,  and  the  picture 
has  a  tendency  to  lie  on  the  surface  of  the  canvas  as  a  decorative 
pattern.  The  subjects  of  Schofield,  the  line  of  foreground  trees 
through  whose  interwoven  branches  one  sees  the  little  towns  and 
streams  beyond,  have  the  quality  of  a  tapestry  of  delicate  gray  and 
buff  spots,  and  though  Redfield's  contrasts  of  color  are  usually 
stronger,  some  of  his  stretches  of  river  and  field  have  much  the  same 
character.  Both  of  these  latter  men  are  younger  than  most  of  the 
others  mentioned,  and  they  represent  a  later  form  of  French  train- 
ing, the  ideals  of  the  new  Salon  rather  than  the  old,  though  not 
such  ideals  in  their  exaggerated  or  extreme  form.  The  new  dis- 
ciples of  Manet,  though  prominent  in  Paris,  have  hardly  appeared 
yet  in  this  country. 

Landscape  painting  has  thus  far  been  treated  in  its  stricter  sense 
as  something  different  from  marine  painting ;  but  the  distinction  has 
not  as  a  rule  been  greatly  respected  by  the  artists,  most  of  them 
occasionally  painting  marines.  Some,  however,  have  made  of  the  sea, 
the  movement  of  its  waves,  its  mists  and  lights,  a  special  province. 
Of  the  older  men,  both  Winslow  Homer  and  William  T.  Richards 
have  been  mentioned,  and  almost  every  phase  of  work  within  the 


462  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

wide  limits  which  they  represent  has  been  attempted.  One  of  the 
earHest  and  most  promising  men,  Robert  A.  Eichelberger,  died  in 
1890,  the  year  that  his  ''Surf  and  Fog"  was  exhibited.  Although 
he  had  been  by  no  means  a  painter  of  the  sea,  it  was  by  far  his  best 
picture  and  seemed  to  promise  a  special  development  in  that  direction. 
Frederick  W.  Kost  and  F.  K.  M.  Rehn  are  peculiarly  marine  painters, 
with  the  same  solidity  of  technique  and  delicacy  of  tone  as  the  best 
of  their  confreres  of  the  land.  Howard  Russell  Butler  paints  the 
long;  stretches  of  the  Lonor  Island  beach  and  surf  rather  than  inland 
views.  Charles  H.  Woodbury  gives  the  sweep  of  the  blue  ocean 
water,  rising  and  falling  with  the  swell  of  the  open  sea  or  eddying 
around  the  hidden  rocks  of  the  shore  with  something  of  the  fresh- 
ness and  breadth  of  Homer  if  without  his  grandeur;  while  Carlton  T. 
Chapman,  in  addition  to  reproducing  the  sea  itself,  has  made  a  feature 
of  recording  the  glories  of  the  American  navy  upon  it,  and  has 
recorded  the  long  series  of  conflicts  from  the  days  of  Paul  Jones 
to  the  Spanish  War  with  a  curiously  complete  knowledge  of  the 
structure  and  also  of  the  tactics  of  the  privateers  and  three-deckers 
of  the  days  of  hemp  and  canvas,  as  well  as  of  the  steel-armored 
battleships  of  to-day. 


DAVIES:    CHILDREN   DANCING* 


462 

)ne  of  tb^- 
lieiberg 

.     ■-  J)'  lar  nib  DCit 

rhat  direction, 

rine  painters, 

s  the  best 

paints  the 

lor  :  burf  rather  than  inland 

vie  'f  the  blue  ocean 

wat  :>   v/^^uii  sea  or  eddying 

arc  ^-^'-tmcthinp-  of  the  fresh- 

oi  can   navy  upon   it,  ai 

the  days  of  Paul  Jonv.s 

1 -armored 


.OVTIOVTAQ    ViaMaJIHD    -.ii'dV/Aa 


CHAPTER    XXIV 

RECENT    FIGURE   PAINTING   IN   AMERICA 

Recent  Figure  Painting.  —  Many  of  the  Branches  of  European  Painting 
UNAVAILABLE.  —  Its  Ideal  Sioe.  —  F.  S.  Church.  —  Thayer.  —  The  Group  of 
Boston  Painters.  —  Reid.  —  Dewing. — Other  Figure  Painters.  —  Cox.  —  Loeb. 
—  The  Romantic  School 

The  figure  painting  of  the  present  period  has  not  as  much  unity 
as  the  landscape  work.  Among  the  landscapists  every  man  stands  in 
some  sort  of  relation  to  others  and,  with  a  little  insistence  on  analogies, 
the  later  work  can  be  connected  with  the  earlier  in  a  fairly  unbroken 
series.  This  is  hardly  possible  with  the  figure  painters.  The  well- 
defined  break  with  the  past  as  to  technical  training  represented  also  a 
break  in  feeling,  in  the  point  of  view  ;  but  this  breaking  with  old  ten- 
dencies gave  the  men  no  solidarity  among  themselves.  It  was  a  time 
when  traditions  were  weakening,  and  innovation  and  original  genius 
were  demanded  to  infuse  new  life  into  the  art.  More  even  than  the 
average  the  American  art  students  were  assured  of  their  ability  to 
meet  that  demand  unless  led  astray  by  insidious  academic  influences, 
and  each  was  vigorously  defending  his  personality  against  every 
possible  diminution. 

In  Europe  this  did  not  prevent  them  from  painting  work 
resembling  sufficiently  closely  that  of  their  fellow-students,  but 
those  that  returned  found  innovation  forced  upon  them.  To 
paint  the  regular  Salon  pictures  in  America  was  difficult,  to  sell 
them  well-nigh  impossible.  They  were  (and  still  are)  brought  back 
from  Munich  and  Paris  on  the  return  of  the  young  practitioner. 
From  their  size  and  often  also  from  their  skill  they  made  a  rather 
brave  showing  on  exhibition  walls  throughout  the  country,  but 
this  same  size  unfitted  them  for  private  houses,  and  the  amount 
of  talent  displayed  rarely  filled  the  wide  expanse  so  amply,  as  to 
overcome  that  and  other  hindrances  to  domestication.  They 
brought  no  money  to  the  artist  nor  any  reputation  which  made  the 

463 


464  HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    R\IXTL\G 

sale  of  his  other  works  easier.  Even  if  he  were  wiUing  to  paint  them 
for  the  sake  of  painting  tliem,  most  of  the  materials  were  lacking  in 
America,  There  were  no  Moors  from  Algeria,  no  Gypsies  from 
Spain,  no  Breton  or  Dutch  peasant  girls  in  sabots  and  picturesque 
caps,  nor  even  any  workingmen  in  blouses,  nor  interesting,  well- 
determined  types  of  any  kind  in  their  old-established  settings  of 
cottage  or  shop.  Most  of  the  people  whom  the  young  artist  saw 
looked  and  dressed  pretty  much  alike,  and  the  costumes  and  sur- 
roundings, though  comfortable,  did  not  strike  him  as  worth  record- 
ing. There  was  no  ofificial  pomp,  the  wealthier  social  life  was  as 
private  as  any  other,  and  it  was  expensive  rather  than  beautiful. 
The  old,  simple  industries  that  were  comprehensible  to  the  eye  and 
which  had  the  consecration  of  centuries  of  use  w^ere  vanishing.  The 
mowing  machine  had  replaced  the  scythe  and  the  sickle,  and  the 
great  factory  the  hand-loom.  The  new  machines  were  complex, 
unpicturesque,  and  even  if  successfully  painted  the  result  would 
have  been  incomprehensible.  Their  appearance  was  too  novel  and 
too  changeable  to  become  typical. 

There  were  difificulties  likewise  in  the  nobler,  imaginative  themes 
of  the  "grand  style."  The  painter's  public  was  neither  nai've 
enough  to  accept  religious  painting  with  simple  devotion  nor  scep- 
tical enough  to  admire  in  it  only  the  skill  displayed.  The  classical 
mythology,  vaguely  understood  even  by  the  unlearned  in  Europe, 
was  here  unknown  to  the  average  spectator  who  was  equally  unac- 
quainted with  history  save  some  vague  ideas  about  the  Revolution 
and  the  Civil  War.  And  the  artist  himself  was  not  much  wiser. 
Even  if  he  wished  to  paint  history  or  historic  genre,  all  costumes 
and  accessories  were  lacking,  and  yet  he  could  not  dispense  with 
costumes  and  paint  the  nude.  Trained  as  they  were  by  the  study 
of  the  undraped  model,  many  of  the  returning  artists  naturally  ex- 
hibited nude  figures;  but  such  subjects  were  not  in  accord  with  the 
national  habits.  Our  jDrudishness  in  the  old  days  was  notorious. 
Vanderlyn's  "  Ariadne  "  when  exhibited  in  New  York  in  1S22  was 
looked  on  with  disfavor,  and  of  his  reproduction  of  Correggio's  "  An- 
tiope,"  the  owner  (who  had  given  an  order  for  a  copy  from  an  old 
painting  without  specifying  the  subject)  cried  :  "  \\  hat  can  I  do  with 
it  .f*      It  is  altoo;ether  indecent.     I  cannot  haiiir  it  in  my  house,  and 


I'lG.    loi. -THAYER  :    A   VIRGIN. 


RECENT   FIGURE   PAINTING    IN    AMERICA  467 

my  family  reprobate  it."  Mrs.  Trollope's  account  of  her  visit  to  the 
collection  of  casts  in  the  Pennsylvania  Academy  shows  Philadelphia 
in  even  a  worse  state  than  New  York,  and  in  the  middle  of  the  cen- 
tury, Greenough,  who  had  the  fine  orotund  style  of  the  epoch,  de- 
clared of  his  "  Chanting  Cherubs  "  :  "  Those  infantine  forms  roused 
an  outcry  of  censure  which  seemed  to  have  exhausted  the  source 
from  which  it  sprang,  since  all  the  harlot  dancers  who  have  found 
an  El  Dorado  in  these  Adantic  cities  have  failed  to  reawaken  it.  I 
say  seem  to  have  exhausted  it,  for  the  same  purblind  squeamishness 
which  gazed  without  alarm  at  the  lascivious  Fandango  awoke  with 
a  roar  at  the  colossal  nakedness  of  Washington's  manly  breast," 
which  recalls  the  tempest  raised  in  Boston  hardly  more  than  a 
dozen  years  ago  by  Saint  Gaudens's  decorative  figures  over  the 
entrance  of  the  Library. 

Against  the  paintings  there  was  no  such  protest  from  outraged 
modesty.  They  were  not  bought,  but  they  were  admired  and 
praised  with  few  dissenting  voices ;  but,  nevertheless,  the  nude  has 
become  imperfectly  acclimated  among  us.  We  are  a  northern 
nation  and  a  decorous  nation,  unlearned  in  artistic  traditions  and 
unacquainted  with  the  artistic  view-point.  Interest  in  a  picture  is 
apt  to  depend  on  the  object  represented  and  not  on  the  manner  of 
its  representation,  and  before  a  painting  of  the  nude  the  average 
beholder  experiences  something  of  the  same  embarrassment  that  he 
would  feel  before  the  reality.  This  is  not  so  strange  nor  so  deroga- 
tory to  the  national  intelligence  as  it  at  first  seems  to  artists  and 
their  friends.  There  were  honest  burghers  in  the  Greece  of  Peri- 
cles who  were  horrified  at  an  undraped  Aphrodite,  and  equally 
excellent  people  of  the  Renaissance  insisted  that  costumes  should 
be  painted  over  the  figures  in  Michael  Angelo's  "  Last  Judgment." 
In  those  favored  periods,  as  to-day,  purely  aesthetic  delight  in  the 
human  figure  and  comprehension  of  its  beauty  and  expressiveness 
was  limited  to  a  comparatively  small  number  of  cultured  people, 
but  among  them  were  some  so  powerful  in  the  state  as  to  be 
able  to  defend  the  artists  and  impose  their  taste  upon  the  public. 
Even  to-day  the  British  Philistine  and  the  French  Bourgeois  (the 
strength  of  the  two  nations)  are  hostile,  and  only  the  long  list  of 
acknowledged  masterpieces  and  the  authority  of  the  cultured  classes 


468  HISTORY    OF    AMERICAN    PAINTING 

keep  them  from  protest.  In  America,  culture  is  democratic,  the 
leisure  class  is  small,  its  opinions  carry  little  weight,  and  it  is  not 
very  sure  of  its  opinions.  The  very  wealthy  have  much  the  same 
views  on  art  as  the  rest  of  the  people,  and  being  founded  on  social 
habits  and  moral  considerations,  they  are  not  likely  to  be  changed 
by  ampler  artistic  knowledge.  The  suggestion  may  seem  grotesque, 
but  it  is  possible  that  public  toleration  of  the  nude  is  more  advanced 
by  certain  widely  circulated  advertisements  of  soaps  and  porous 
plasters  than  by  all  the  efforts  of  culture.  Whether  these  considera- 
tions are  sound  or  not,  the  fact  remains  that  in  the  annual  exhibi- 
tions paintings  of  the  nude  are  not  numerous,  are  usually  small  in 
scale,  and  are  treated  decoratively  rather  than  realistically.  The 
carefully  finished  life-size  study  such  as  crowds  the  walls  of  the 
French  and  German  salons  is  practically  unknown. 

With  religious,  mythological,  historical,  and  nude  painting  una- 
vailable or  to  be  practised  only  under  unfavorable  circumstances  it 
would  seem  as  if  there  were  little  field  left  for  imaginative  art,  and  that 
the  painters  would  be  forced  to  realistic  copying  of  the  life  about 
them.  Such  is  the  conclusion  to  which  Fromentin  comes  after 
summing  up  the  situation  in  Holland  in  the  seventeenth  century: 
"  A  nation  of  bourgeois,  practical  and  consequently  little  given  to 
dreams,  very  busy,  not  mystic  in  the  least,  anti-Latin  in  spirit,  with- 
out traditions,  of  parsimonious  habits,"  All  the  conditions  except 
the  last  fit  America  even  better  than  Holland,  and  yet  the  conclu- 
sion that  the  nation  would  "  insist  on  having  its  own  portrait,"  so 
excellently  true  in  one  case  is  false  in  the  other  —  which  shows  how 
easy  it  is  to  prophesy  after  the  event.  The  American  people  are 
practical  atid  energetic  not  only  from  their  environment,  but  also 
from  their  race;  for  however  much  it  may  have  been  diluted  it  was 
the  English  blood  which  gave  its  character  to  the  nation,  yet  like 
the  English,  at  heart  they  are  enormously  sentimental.  They  do 
not  display  their  feelings  (except  their  anger).  Something  of  Puri- 
tan tradition,  but  more  of  personal  pride,  has  convinced  them  that  to 
be  unable  to  conceal  emotion  is  the  part  of  a  weakling  or  one  lack- 
ing in  breeding,  but  there  are  matters  on  which  tliey  feel  profoundly. 
These  are  mostly  al^stract  ideas  of  faith  or  loyalty  for  which  they 
have  as  yet  found   no  visible  representation.     They  have   no  god- 


FIG.   I02.— TARBELL:    A    GIRL   CROCHETING. 
[Copyright,  1905,  by  N.  E.  Montross.     From  a  Montross  Print.] 


RECENT    FIGURE   PAINTING    IN    AMERICA 


471 


desses  or  saints,  they  have  forgotten  their  legends,  they  do  not 
read  the  poets,  but  something  of  what  goddess,  saint,  or  heroine 
represented  to  other  races  they  find  in  the  ideahzation  of  their 
womankind.  They  will  have  such  idealization  decorous;  there  is 
no  room  for  the  note  of  unrestrained  passion,  still  less  for  sensuality. 
It  is  the  grace  of  children,  the  tenderness  of  motherhood,  the  beauty 
and  purity  of  young  girls  which  they  demand,  but  especially  the 
last.  The  American  girl  is  placed  upon  a  pedestal  and  each  offers 
worship  according  to  his  abilities,  the  artist  among  the  rest.  All  of 
the  papers  from  the  yellowest  of  the  daily  press  to  the  most  digni- 
fied of  the  magazines  are  filled  with  representations  of  her.  Gibson 
has  created  the  best-known  type,  to  which  his  name  has  been  given, 
a  creature  rather  overwhelming  in  her  perfections,  with  no  occupa- 
tion in  life  save  to  be  adored  by  young  athletes  in  tennis  clothes  or 
by  disreputable  foreign  noblemen.  Gibson,  however,  respects  the 
child  of  his  imagination ;  but  some  of  his  brother-illustrators  for  the 
weekly  papers,  though  they  undoubtedly  stand  ready  personally  to 
assault  the  temerarious  man  who  should  assert  that  the  American 
girl  is  not  modest  and  mannerly,  have  yet  fallen  into  the  way  of 
representing  her  as  if  she  were  neither.  This  is  certainly  not  from 
malice,  but  rather  from  the  following  of  foreign  types,  the  difficulty 
of  being  perennially  funny  which  leads  to  the  harping  on  purely 
conventional  ideas,  and  also,  perhaps,  from  a  certain  lack  of  breeding 
both  in  the  artists  and  the  great  public  to  which  they  cater. 

This  side  of  the  representation  of  the  girl,  moreover,  is  simply  a 
homage  to  the  eternal  feminine  and  has  little  distinctively  Ameri- 
can in  it.  Sketches  of  pretty  girls  are  the  staple  product  of  popular 
illustrated  papers  all  over  the  world.  The  painters  naturally  have 
tried  for  and  attained  a  higher  achievement.  One  of  the  earliest,  F. 
S.  Church,  also  did  much  work  as  an  illustrator,  and  is  interesting 
because  he  never  studied  abroad  nor  ever  obtained  a  complete  tech- 
nical training.  He  never  even  supplemented  his  deficiencies  by 
careful  study  from  nature,  so  that  some  of  his  birds  and  beasts  — 
his  sandpipers,  for  instance  —  are  hardly  more  than  schoolboy  hiero- 
glyphics; and  yet,  in  spite  of  a  manifest  amateurishness,  there  was 
a  charm  and  freshness  about  his  works  that  not  only  captured  the 
public,  but  appealed   to   the   men   returning  froni   the   Continental 


472 


HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    rAlNlIXG 


Studios,  so  that  he  was  one  of  the  earliest  members  of  the  Society  of 
American  Artists.  They  are  not  profound,  they  are  not  subtle  — 
these  maidens  skating  with  polar  bears  or  lecturing  to  Hamingoes 
or  making  Welsh  rabbits  for  an  admiring  circle  of  miscellaneous 
beasts  ;  yet,  if  they  have  the  simplicity  of  a  story  told  to  children, 
they  have  also  freshness  and  charm.  If  the  drawing  is  loose,  it  is 
also  graceful ;  the  light,  bright  tints  keep,  even  in  oil,  the  quality 
of  washes  of  water-color,  and  there  is  real  decorative  feeling. 

Church  stands  quite  alone,  however,  in  this  simplicity  of  subject 
and  workmanship;  all  of  the  other  men  have  the  learning  of  the  for- 
eign schools,  which  im])lies  also  more  complexity  of  thought.  One 
of  the  most  prominent  of  these,  Abbott  1 1.  Thayer,  has  some  analogy 
with  Church  in  his  admiration  of  triumphant  maidenhood,  but  the 
feeling  is  profounder.  They  do  not  make  Welsh  rabbits  or  go 
skating,  those  virgins  of  Thayer.  They  are  set  up  frankly  for  our 
adoration,  and  it  goes  to  them  at  once  without  reserve,  they  are  so 
strong  and  beautiful  and  pure.  It  is  a  noble  ideal,  a  sort  of  revivi- 
fying of  the  figures  of  Phidias  with  modern  spirituality,  and  the 
execution  corresponds  with  it.  The  draftsmanship  is  large  and  am- 
ple, the  color  pure  and  strong  and  held  in  large,  simple  masses,  the 
arrangement  well  balanced  and  decorative,  and  the  handling  also 
large,  neglecting  details,  with  a  good  weight  of  pigment  and  much 
use  of  the  palette  knife.  The  execution  shows  some  tendency  to  fall 
off  in  unimportant  details,  as  if  it  were  not  done  without  an  effort, 
but  one  must  have  a  special  curiosity  for  such  matters  to  notice  it. 
The  general  effect  is  of  a  peculiar  unity  and  loftiness  of  inspiration. 
It  is,  as  has  been  said,  a  noble  ideal.  It  could  not  have  been  jDroduced 
on  the  Continent,  and  scarceb;  in  h^ngland  ;  but,  though  Thayer 
gives  to  it  its  highest  expression,  the  conception  is  w^idespread  in 
America.  At  base  it  is  the  woman  of  Winslow  Homer,  less  robust, 
more  graceful,  but  with  her  soundness  of  body  and  mind.  Thayer 
spiritualizes  her  until  she  becomes  almost  as  a  sacred  thing;  others 
abating  no  whit  of  her  charm  and  grace,  still  make  her  human,  —  a 
creature  ca])able  of  plaving  tennis,  pouring  tea,  or  even  sitting  in 
a  hammock;  a  creature  that  is  real,  and  whom  we  have  met. 

Benson,  Tarbell,  Reid,  and  others  so  paint  her,  with  an  easier, 
surer  skill,   if  with   an   inspiration  less  celestial.     These    three  men 


FIG.  103.  — BENSON:    IN  THE   SPRUCE   WOODS. 
[Copyright,  1905,  by  N.  E.  Montross.     From  a  Montross  Print.] 


RECENT   FIGURE    PAINTING    IN    AMERICA  475 

studied  together  in  Paris,  at  the  Academie  Julien  and  also  under 
Dannat,  but  on  their  return  Benson  and  Tarbell  settled  in  Boston 
or  its  vicinity  instead  of  New  York.  There  were  other  students 
from  the  Academie  Julien,  like  Major  and  William  W.  Churchill; 
later  men  like  Philip  L.  Hale  accepted  their  methods,  and  the 
spirit  of  the  old  Hunt  training  and  of  Duveneck's  class  was  enough 
like  theirs  in  the  desire  for  breadth,  simplicity,  and  strong  direct 
work  to  give  to  the  whole  body  of  painting  produced  in  Boston 
a  distinct  character  of  its  own,  which  cannot  be  said  of  another 
American  city.  It  is  a  little  like  the  Glasgow  school  in  Great  Britain, 
not  only  in  its  solidarity  as  against  a  great  heterogeneous  metropolis, 
but  also  in  the  sort  of  work  which  it  does.  It  follows  more  the 
artist's  standpoint  and  seeks  artist  qualities  in  handling  and  light 
and  color,  a  certain  breadth,  a  rougher  texture,  a  quivering  light. 
The  artists  do  not  confine  themselves  to  ideal  pictures  of  young 
women.  All  have  painted  portraits  more  or  less.  Vinton,  who  be- 
longs in  the  group,  is  exclusively  a  portrait  painter.  But  most  of  the 
men  made  their  studies  at  the  period  which  gave  them  a  peculiar 
interest  in  open-air  tints  and  coloring.  They  painted  landscapes, 
they  painted  figures  in  the  open  air  and  in  darkened  interiors,  they 
studied  all  forms  of  light  with  the  resulting  shadows  and  reflected 
tones,  and  they  succeeded  in  producing  pictures  of  brilliant  but 
pleasing  color.  Its  frankness,  its  directness,  suggests  again  Wins- 
low  Homer,  with  more  of  grace  and  of  the  training  of  the  schools, 
and  with  less  of  originality  and  elemental  force. 

Reid,  who  settled  in  New  York,  belongs  clearly  to  the  same 
group  and  has  the  same  inspiration,  though  his  handling  is  less 
sweeping,  more  broken,  in  a  way  that  suggests  the  influence  of 
Manet,  and  his  figures  have  a  slender  gracility  that  is  personal 
to  him. 

All  of  the  men  already  mentioned  in  this  chapter,  and  the  larger 
group  of  which  they  are  representative,  paint  clearly,  strongly,  and 
frankly ;  there  is  feeling,  but  there  is  no  mystery.  There  is  nothing 
like  the  "  Winifred  Dysart "  of  Fuller,  and  nothing  that  corresponds, 
as  that  does,  to  the  work  of  the  sentimental,  or  "  tonal "  landscape 
painters,  nor  have  these  latter  among  the  younger  figure  painters 
any  exact   counterparts.      The   fact   is    rather    strange,   and    to    be 


476  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

accounted  for,  perhaps,  by  the  ahiiost  universal  training  in  tlie  Paris 
ateliers  which  tlie  figure  painters  received  to  a  far  greater  degree 
than  the  landscapists.  Clarity  was  insisted  on.  In  art  as  in  letters, 
"  what  is  not  clear  is  not  French,"  and  though  l3y  a  certain  reaction 
some  French  artists  have  latterly  attempted  the  mysterious,  Ameri- 
cans have  not  yet  imitated  them. 

But  clearness  does  not  exclude  sentiment  even  the  most  delicate 
and  subtle.  If  Ryder  or  Blakelock,  for  instance,  have  no  corre- 
sponding figure  painters,  the  spirit  of  work  like  Tryon's  is  closely 
matched  by  that  of  Dewing.  It  is  not  shapeless,  it  is  not  inco- 
herent; the  things  that  count,  the  faces  and  hands  and  certain  bits 
of  detail,  are  drawn  with  the  extremest  and  minutest  perfection. 
Yet  it  is  not  the  completeness  of  tlie  drawing  that  strikes  one, 
but  its  quality.  It  is  infinitely  delicate  and  refined,  the  contour 
fading  into  the  background  or  reappearing  with  the  changing  light, 
and  the  color  matches  it,  soft,  shimmering,  evanescent.  The  can- 
vases, unless  decorative  work,  are  usually  small.  There  were  one  or 
two  early  productions,  like  the  "  Prelude  "  of  1883,  that  were  of  con- 
siderable si/.e  and  filled  with  an  infinity  of  delicate  detail,  flowers  and 
marbles,  but  these  were  not  repeated,  the  tendency  being  toward  the 
elimination  of  detail,  lliere  are  many  portrait  heads  and  graceful 
single  figures  seated  or  standing,  and  when  a  group  is  given,  it  is  apt 
to  be  as  a  decorative  spot  or  pattern  against  a  wide  expanse  of  soft 
green  or  gray  background.  They  are  wonderful,  these  little  figures 
and  heads  in  their  distinction,  and  they  thrill  us  with  something  of 
the  strange  poignant  charm  of  Gainsborough's  women. 

No  one  else  has  quite  equalled  the  "  Lady  in  Yellow,"  the  "  Lady 
in  White,"  "  Comcedia,"  and  the  other  subjects  of  Dewing's  which 
the  mind  recalls,  but  others  have  worked  in  a  similar  spirit.  Mrs. 
Dewing  has  given  to  flowers  almost  the  personal  charm  of  her 
husband's  figures.  Edward  \.  Bell  has  the  soft,  enveloping"  light 
and  color,  and  there  is  something  of  it  in  the  work  of  Henry 
Prelhvitz  and  of  Edith  Mitchell  Prellwitz.  \\<i\\  particularly  has 
done  some  groups  of  slender  classical  figures  or  of  yoiuig  girls  in 
gauzy  modern  dresses  of  a  delicate  decorative  effect.  But  this  group 
is  not  large.  The  i)ainters  even  of  ideal  figures  do  not  usually  wrap 
them  in  mist,  though  here,  as  with  the  landscapists,  there  is  no  sharp 


1-1*..   I04.  — REID  :     FLEUR   DE   LYS. 

[Copyright,  1899,  by  Robert  Reid ;   from  a  Copley  Print.     Copyright,  1899,  by  Curtis  &  Cameron, 

Pubhshers,  Boston.] 


RECENT   FIGURE    PAINTING    IN    AMERICA 


479 


division  to  be  made.  H.  Siddons  Mowbray,  Irving  R.  Wiles,  Francis 
C.  Jones,  Charles  C.  Curran,  George  R.  Barse,  F.  V.  Du  Mond,  and 
many  more  have  painted  easel  pictures  wherein,  under  a  more  or 
less  plausible  title,  lovely  girls  are  grouped  in  suitable  surroundings. 

The  object  of  them  all  is  charm,  the  external  charm  of  beautiful 
forms  beautifully  rendered.  As  with  all  works  of  real  merit,  these 
are  personal,  the  style  of  each  man  perfectly  distinguishable  on  sight, 
but  difficultly  by  description.  All  are  masters  of  their  trade,  deli- 
cate and  sure  draftsmen  and  colorists.  Mowbray's  rendering  of 
form  resembles  Devving's  in  its  subtle  refinement ;  Wiles  has  a  cer- 
tain breadth  and  sureness  of  brush  work  even  in  his  smallest  pictures ; 
Jones  has  a  tenderness  for  children  and  works  in  a  brighter,  higher 
key  than  the  others  ;  Curran  has  a  wider  range  of  subjects,  and, 
if  possible,  a  draftsmanship  more  sure,  minute,  and  unwearied ; 
Barse  and  Du  Mond  have  each  a  decorative  quality  of  their  own,  the 
one  broad  and  simple,  the  other  crowding  a  multiplicity  of  detail 
into  harmonious  masses. 

All  of  these  men  have  done  other  work  besides  the  small, 
ideal,  or  poetic  subjects  which  have  been  taken  as  a  bond  be- 
tween them.  Wiles  has  latterly  turned  to  portraiture ;  Mowbray 
has  also  done  some  small  portrait  heads  of  great  charm,  but  is 
now  devoting  himself  to  mural  painting,  as  are  several  of  the  others, 
notably  Barse.  Nearly  all  have  painted  scenes  of  contemporary 
life,  but  they  have  done  so  seeking  grace  rather  than  character, 
painting  the  gowns  in  the  same  spirit  as  Greek  robes.  For  it  is 
noticeable  that  all  these  figure  painters  from  F.  S.  Church  down  have 
been  confined  to  two  types  of  costume  —  a  sort  of  a  classic  and  a  sort 
of  a  modern,  sometimes  accurate  in  detail  and  spirit,  but  usually 
loosely  adapted  and  fitted  out  with  draperies  and  studio  odds  and 
ends,  and  with  one  style  running  into  the  other  as  freely  as  in  Rey- 
nolds's portraits.  None  of  the  painters  has  been  interested  in  the 
character  and  cut  of  a  costume  as  representing  a  specific  period  or 
nation,  and  this  not  from  the  difficulty  of  obtaining  exact  historical 
costumes  in  America  (already  much  harped  of),  but  because  they 
sought  abstract  qualities  of  line  and  color  and  form,  and  were 
indifferent  as  to  the  dress  in  which  they  found  them. 

These  qualities  they  also  found  in   the  nude  and  painted  it  at 


4So  HISTORY    OF   AM1:RICAN    PAINTING 

times,  although  from  the  general  feeling  of  tlicir  work,  as  well  as  for 
other  reasons  already  given,  not  realistically  nor  usually  on  a  large 
scale.  Almost  the  only  man  to  paint  the  nude  as  it  is  understood 
in  Europe,  except  as  part  of  decorations,  was  Kenyon  Cox.  In  the 
years  following  his  return  from  I'^urope  he  painted  repeatedly 
large  life-size  studies  of  the  same  general  type  as  the  Etudes 
of  the  Salons,  and  painted  them  well  and  learnedly.  More  than 
almost  any  one  else  he  represents  the  academic  traditions  as  they 
are  understood  abroad.  He  knows  the  great  work  of  the  past;  not 
only  has  he  seen  and  admired,  but  he  has  studied  and  analyzed 
it  with  exceptional  sympath\-  and  clarity,  as  his  writings  show. 
There  was  in  his  nudes,  as  in  his  compositions  and  his  portraits, 
a  conscious  striving  for  the  qualities  which  may  properly  be  called 
academic,  rhythm  of  line  and  mass,  rendering  of  form  in  accord  with 
the  old  traditions,  and  sometimes  the  expression  of  a  symbolic  idea. 
This  may  be  said,  too,  of  the  \vorks  of  Elliott  Daingerfield,  who  has 
also  tried  for  some  breath  of  the  inspiration  of  sixteenth-century 
Italy,  and  has  attained  at  times  to  a  glow  and  richness  of  color  which 
belongs  to  that  age  rather  than  this. 

As  far  as  the  nudes  of  Cox  were  concerned,  he  received  small 
encouragement  from  the  public,  and  he  has  been  led,  like  so  many 
other  men,  more  and  more  into  mural  decoration  for  which  his 
qualities  peculiarly  fit  him,  just  as  Mrs.  Cox  with  somewhat  similar 
qualities  (more  graceful  if  less  robust)  has  turned  from  ideal  compo- 
sition to  paint  very  personal  and  charming  portraits  of  children. 

With  entirely  different  methods  from  Cox  or  Daingerfield  and  in 
a  dii^^erent  spirit,  too,  Louis  Loeb  also  paints  classical  scenes  like 
"  The  Temple  of  the  Winds,"  with  its  luminous  figures  in  sun- 
light and  its  fluttering  dra]K'ries,  but  the  landscape  has  each  year 
usuq^ed  a  larger  place  until  it  has  dominated  the  picture.  It  has  be- 
come a  landscape  with  figures  now  where  through  Arcadian  groves 
nymphs  and  shei)herds  rove  in  the  golden  glow  of  evening.  It  has, 
more  than  most  of  its  companions  in  the  exhibitions,  a  European 
completeness  of  execution,  and  strangely  enough  this  very  complete- 
ness detracts  somewhat  from  its  interest.  It  is  not  I  )usseldorfian, — 
far  from  it,  —  but  it  lacks  the  personal  note  so  strong  in  the  other 
works    that    a])proach    it    at    all    in    (pialitw       Obvious,    recognized 


c 


Eh       2 


RECENT   FIGURE    PAINTING   IN    AMERICA  483 

beauties  are  accumulated  with  such  perfect  ease  and  sureness  that 
the  effect  is  a  Httle  over-sweet,  a  quality  that  is  also  felt  in  such 
charming  ideal  heads  as  the  "  Blossoming."  This  is  not  to  blame 
the  work  of  Loeb,  but  to  explain  that  it,  in  its  own  way,  is  also 
academic.  Perhaps,  because  having  returned  more  recently  from 
Paris  than  the  other  men,  he  still  holds  somewhat  more  foreign 
standards  than  they. 

The  distinction  may  be  felt  by  comparing  it  with  work  which 
may  vaguely  be  called  romantic,  the  work  of  a  group  which  would 
include  J.  Humphreys  Johnston,  Albert  Herter,  Bryson  Burroughs, 
and  Arthur  B.  Davies.  These,  if  any,  represent  among  us  the 
romantic  school,  although  it  would  be  difficult  to  define  just 
wherein  the  special  characteristics  of  that  school  consist.  It  no 
longer,  as  in  the  days  of  Delacroix,  takes  its  subjects  from  Walter 
Scott  or  Byron,  nor  does  it  delight  in  swan-necked  heroines  in  ring- 
lets ;  but  the  name,  for  want  of  a  better,  may  stand  for  a  revolt 
against  the  commonplaceness  of  life.  The  escape  from  its  prosaic 
details  is  made  not  by  spiritualizing  them,  by  giving  their  inner 
essence  freed  from  all  unessential  detail,  nor  yet  by  turning  to  the 
accepted  beauties  worked  out  by  a  long  succession  of  artists  and  con- 
secrated by  academic  tradition,  but  rather  by  trying  to  make  a  world 
of  one's  own  where  one  may  enter  as  into  a  walled  garden  suited  to 
his  mind  and  there  enjoy  his  vision  with  all  discordant  sights  shut 
out.  Even  here  the  difference  is  of  degree  rather  than  of  kind. 
Most  artists  have  some  such  realm  more  or  less  elaborated  and  re- 
moved from  reality ;  it  is  only  necessary  to  recall  figure  painters  like 
Dewing  or  landscapists  like  Tryon,  but  the  group  under  considera- 
tion, perhaps  because  they  are  for  the  most  part  younger  men, 
seem  to  have  moved  farther  into  the  realm  of  dreams.  They  are  not 
alike  in  the  completeness  of  their  visions. 

Herter,  for  instance,  seems  without  definite  point  of  view.  He 
should  perhaps  have  been  classed  with  the  non-resident  Americans, 
not  only  because  he  has  worked  at  least  as  much  abroad  as  in  this 
country,  but  even  more  because  he  still  paints  Salon  pictures  —  pic- 
tures whose  whole  conception  and  execution  is  based  on  the  require- 
ments of  great  crowded  galleries.  To  many  they  are  his  least 
successful  works.      Living  from  his  boyhood  in  beautiful  surround- 


484  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

ings,  producing  notable  work  almost  before  he  was  in  his  teens, 
studying  and  travelling  under  the  best  auspices,  the  very  multiplicity 
of  his  appreciations  seems  to  have  hindered  his  achievement.  He 
has  been  inspired  by  Japanese  kakemonos  and  by  Greek  vase  paint- 
ino-s,  he  has  drawn  Renaissance  ladies  and  Norse  demigods,  he  has 
painted  his  figures  nude,  and  he  has  wra}:)ped  them  in  all  the  splen- 
dors of  Oriental  or  "  Liberty  "  fabrics ;  but  in  it  all  there  is  felt  no 
clear,  personal  note.  The  execution  is  often  amazingly  skilful,  but 
it  has  been  said  of  him  that  it  was  a  pity  that  a  man  able  to  paint 
anything  should  not  as  yet  have  discovered  anything  particularly 
worth  painting.  This  remark,  called  forth  by  the  sight  of  one  of  his 
Salon  pictures,  might  be  excusable  under  the  circumstances,  but  it 
goes  too  far.  Herter  has  done  much  charming  work,  especially  in 
water-color  of  which  difiFicult  medium  he  is  a  complete  master.  His 
drawing  is  sure  and  graceful,  his  color  rich,  and  when  he  wishes  sur- 
prisingly strong,  and  there  is  an  unfailing  decorative  quality  aided 
by  his  fertility  of  invention  of  costume  and  detail.  In  connection 
with  her  husband's  work  mention  should  also  be  made  of  that  of 
Mrs.  Herter,  which  resembles  it  in  its  beauty  of  color  and  its  decora- 
tive quality,  but  is  apt  to  be  softer  and  more  delicate,  done  in  pastel 
rather  than  oil,  and  turning  to  portraiture  rather  than  ideal  subjects. 
Johnston  must  also  now  be  counted  among  the  non-residents,  hav- 
ing settled  in  Europe  with  no  fixed  date  of  return,  but  he  shows  clearly 
an  influence  which  is  not  European.  At  the  very  beginning  of  his 
career  he  served  as  aid  to  John  La  P^arge  in  his  decorations  in  Trinit}^ 
Church  and  elsewhere,  and  more  than  any  other  of  the  many  assist- 
ants of  that  master  he  assimilated  not  only  the  methods  but  the 
essence  of  his  work.  It  has  not  limited  his  personality.  The 
"Portrait  of  the  Artist's  Mother,"  now  in  the  Lu\em])ourg,  or 
the  "  Mystere  dc  la  Nuit,"  could  have  been  painted  by  no  one  else, 
but  the  influence  of  La  Earge's  color  theories  is  manifest,  and 
equally  manifest  is  the  large  sympathetic  grasping  of  the  underly- 
ing spirit  of  the  subject.  There  is,  too,  about  the  work  as  a  whole 
something  of  the  unsatisfying  (piality  of  La  Farge's  earlier  work,  as 
if  the  artist  were  capable  of  ampler  achievements,  and  for  that  reason 
the  lover  of  American  art  cannot  but  wish  that  his  production  should 
be  greater. 


FIG.  106.-COX:     HOPE   AND   MEMORY. 


rCopvri.ht,   1900,  by  Kenyon  Cox;   from  a  Copley  Print.     Copyright,  1900,  by  Curtis  &  Cameron. 
"-  Publishers,  Boston.] 


RECENT   FIGURE   PAINTING   IN    AMERICA  487 

The  works  of  Burrouglis,  altliough  they  are  nientiuiied  here, 
are  not  always  romantic,  they  are  often  academic  or  realistic,  but 
whether  they  are  decorative  panels  of  colossal  archers  or  country 
girls  hanging  out  clothes,  a  mother  and  child,  or  the  Norns,  the  same 
animating  spirit  runs  through  each  and  receives  in  each  complete 
and  artistic  expression.  The  feeling  is  difficult  to  analyze  apart 
from  the  form  in  which  it  is  clothed ;  there  are  vague  memories  of 
the  old  myths,  there  is  a  feeling  for  the  tenderness  of  motherhood, 
for  the  slender  grace  of  half-grown  childish  form ;  but  whatever  the 
subject,  it  is  rendered  with  a  peculiar  large  simplicity  of  drafts- 
manship, a  soft  luminous  coloring  and  particularly  with  unity  in  the 
masses,  each  color  forming  a  spot  by  itself,  carefully  placed  so  as 
to  combine  into  a  harmonious  composition  within  the  limits  of  the 
frame. 

These  men  and  others  like  them  belong  in  a  way  to  the  imagina- 
tive school  but  all  at  times  drop  away  from  it  more  or  less  completely. 
The  romantic  painter  par  excellence  is  Davies,  and  his  work  is  as 
personal  and  as  interesting  as  any  done  in  the  country  to-day. 
Never  once  does  he  wander  from  his  dream,  his  vision.  His  en- 
chanted garden  is  not  visited  at  rare  intervals ;  it  is  not  one  of  many 
resorts,  it  is  his  home,  his  retreat  from  which  he  never  departs.  It  is 
a  wonderful  land  of  which  he  gives  us  glimpses,  —  of  flowery  meadows 
and  bosky  groves  peopled  by  youth  and  childhood.  It  is  a  world  that 
touches  the  real  world  only  remotely,  choosing  from  it  bits  with  the 
odd,  impulsive  likes  and  dislikes  of  a  child ;  blossoms  and  wide-eyed 
babies  and  blue  distances,  pinafores  and  the  bits  of  nude  rendered 
with  exquisite  tenderness.  It  all  has  a  naiveness,  a  belief  in  its  own 
imaginings,  which  recall  early  Florentine  workers,  the  painters  of 
allegories  and  decorators  of  cassoiie.  These  men  probably  had  some 
formative  influence  on  Davies,  for  one  of  the  earliest  remembered 
of  his  works  was  a  study  sent  in  to  the  competition  for  the  decoration 
of  the  Criminal  Courts  Building  in  New  York,  a  study  where  most  of 
the  virtues  and  vices  were  personified  and  woven  into  a  composition 
that  looked  like  a  sketch  from  some  forgotten  fresco  by  Botticelli, 
while  for  the  elucidation  of  the  allegory  the  most  emotional  and  least 
critical  of  critics.  Pater,  Ruskin,  and  the  rest,  were  cited  as  authori- 
ties.    The  Italian  influence,  however,  though  it  shows  now  and  then 


488  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAIXTIXG 

in  the   drawing  of  a  siren    or  satyr,  is   seldom   noticeable  in  later 
work. 

This  consists  mostly  of  small  panels  or  canvases  varying  from  a 
few  inches  to  a  couple  of  feet  in  length.  Sometimes  as  in  the  "  Two 
Step  "  the  figures  fill  the  canvas,  sometimes  they  are  but  incidents 
of  the  landscape,  sometimes  the  landscape  or  marine  is  without 
them.  Considering  that  the  artist  is  still  a  young  man,  the  pro- 
duction has  been  very  considerable,  but  in  all  the  series,  even  in 
the  little  things,  there  has  been  no  repetition.  Certain  habits  of 
handling  recur  more  or  less,  but  the  subjects,  the  coloring,  the 
arrangement,  are  infinitely  varied.  The  coloring  especially,  which 
with  ideal  painters  is  apt  to  crystallize  into  a  formula,  is  constantly 
shifting  in  rich  and  varied  combinations.  Each  work  has  its  own 
sentiment  too,  of  grace  or  tenderness,  or  perhaps  only  of  curious 
patterning.  It  is  not  all  equally  good,  purely  imaginative  work 
rarely  is,  and  at  times  the  spectator  may  regret  that  there  seems  to 
be  a  trend  toward  William  IJlake  rather  than  Giorgione ;  but  as  a 
whole  it  is  capable  of  giving  keen  delight  to  a  mind  in  sympathy 
with  it.  It  is  regrettable  that  it  is  so  little  seen.  It  rarely  appears 
at  anv  of  the  annual  exhibitions  and  must  be  souQ-ht  in  a  dealer's 
gallery.  That,  like  the  work  of  Whistler,  it  should  suffer  from  the 
neighborhood  of  canvases  done  in  a  different  spirit  is  inevitable  and 
yet  such  haphazard  association  is  sometimes  tonic  and  illuminative. 


FIG.  I07.  — BURROUGHS  :    ARIADNE. 
[Copyright,  1904,  by  Bryson  Burroughs.] 


liKLMl   ;      M'  '1  IIIK    AM'    *-  llll.l>. 


.niinj  unA  MMHH'i/    :  iihumu 


CHAPTER    XXV 

RECENT    FIGURE    PAINTING    IN    AMERICA    {Continued) 

Brush. —  Bi.lm.  —  Horatio  Walker.  —  Sl'p.jiccts  from  American  Life  less  fre- 
quently CHOSEN  Bv  Painters  than  v,\  Illustrators. — Causes  for  this. — 
Ulrich.  —  Ward.  —  Painters  of  Frontier  Life.  —  Remington.  —  Hovenden. — 
Painters  of  the  Civil  War. —  Other  Paintings.  —  The  Most  Recent  Devel- 
opment. —  Henri.  —  Glackens.  —  Water-Color 

The  previous  chapter  has  been  devoted  to  men  who  sought 
beauty.  Without  exception  they  have  sought  it,  where  it  was  most 
obviously  to  be  found,  in  beautiful  persons  and  things.  They  are 
not  oblivious  to  the  inner  beauty  of  the  spirit,  in  some  cases  it  domi- 
nates the  work,  but  it  is  always  gloriously  lodged.  The  example 
of  the  Flemish  and  Dutch  painters  and  of  Germans  like  Holbein, 
who  disregarded  grace  of  form  for  the  intimate  and  personal  expres- 
sion of  character,  is  less  attractive  and  more  difficult  to  follow. 
Against  all  those  who  see  the  noble  character  through  graceful 
forms  and  faces  in  the  freshness  of  youth,  there  is  hardly  more  than 
one  to  be  found  who  finds  it  beneath  features  neither  classical  nor 
youthful,  yet  so  human,  so  intense,  and  so  sympathetic  is  the  char- 
acter revealed  in  the  pictures  of  George  De  Forest  Brush,  that  his 
name  is  among  the  first  mentioned  when  the  standing  of  our  art 
is  to  be  defended.  He  does  not  paint  the  mother  radiant,  strong, 
and  incredibly  young,  seated  among  a  group  of  rollicking  chubby 
cherubs ;  she  is,  on  the  contrary,  if  not  sad,  at  least  grave,  and  holds 
tenderly  the  very  human  child  in  her  arms.  Youthful  freshness  and 
something  of  health  and  strength  have  been  paid  as  the  price  of 
maternity,  but  there  is  no  sign  that  the  price  is  regretted  or  even 
considered.  There  is  a  strange  penetrating  peace  that  fills  the 
group,  so  manifest  and  so  appealing  that,  in  reproductions,  the  pic- 
tures have  had  almost  the  popularity  of  those  exploiting  the  graces 

of  youth. 

491 


492 


HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 


A  charm  so  delicate  as  tliis  is  only  obtainable  by  a  craftsman- 
ship equally  delicate  and  perfect.  It  is  not  alone  for  the  sentiment 
that  the  great  art  of  Holbein,  of  the  Van  Eycks,  or  of  Terburg 
is  recalled.  Their  complete  and  calm  mastery  of  their  trade  with 
no  trace  of  effort  or  of  difficulties  evaded  is  not  for  our  day  but 
something  of  their  quality  Brush  has.  His  canvases  seem  to  have 
been  done  with  their  unhastening,  absorbed  labor.  They  have  unity 
of  sentiment  and  completeness  of  rendering.  The  composition  both 
in  line  and  spot  is  usually  carefully  poised  and  complete  ;  the  color, 
as  befits  the  sentiment,  is  in  a  subdued,  grave  harmony  and  the 
drawing  of  great  beauty  —  the  details  subordinated  to  the  chief 
masses,  but  seen  in  all  their  changes  of  form  and  texture  with 
a  minute  fidelity  which  never  loses  interest  or  degenerates  into  the 
commonplace. 

Besides  these  groups,  taken  usually  froni  his  own  family.  Brush 
has  with  similar  skill  and  feeling  painted  a  number  of  portraits, 
and  it  is  worth  while  to  recall  also  the  earlier  Indian  subjects,  like 
the  "  King  and  the  Sculptor  "  where  he  showed  himself  an  excellent 
pupil  of  his  master,  Geromc,  or  the  "  Moose  Hunt,"  on  a  larger 
scale,  and  far  more  original  in  its  realization  of  the  chase  of  the 
unwieldy  beast  by  a  canoeful  of  red  men.  There  is  even  a  Salon 
picture  of  his,  a  girl  and  a  grizzly  bear,  both  life  size,  which  is  in- 
comprehensible except  as  an  illustration  of  one  of  Bret  Harte's 
stories  —  and  it  illustrates  the  story  very  badly.  Such  tentative 
essays  were  made  by  many  men  when  they  left  the  studios,  and 
before  they  found  their  true  path.  There  is  by  Dewing  a  "Sor- 
ceress," which  might  match  the  "Aztec  King"  of  Brush,  and 
Thayer  painted  a  notable  series  of  summer  nieadows  with  white 
and  red  cows  in  the  heat-dried  grass,  which  in  spite  of  their  merits 
(the  dry  sultriness  of  the  season  has  not  been  equally  well  given 
since)  are  yet  almost  as  much  ignored  by  the  general  public,  as  the 
bulldogs  and  other  animals  that  he  did,  back  in  the  early  seventies 
before  he  saw  Paris. 

Brush  stands  by  himself.  Many  paint  mothers  and  children, 
and  do  not  make  them  ]:)retty,  but  they  lack  either  his  sentiment 
or  his  skill.  There  is  no  one  else  who  does  the  same  kind  of  work. 
Equally  diiificult  to  place  in  any  general  group  are  Horatio  Walker 


RECENT   FIGURE   PAINTING   IN   AMERICA 


493 


and  Robert  F.  Blum,  and  tlicsc  unclassified  independents  may  serve 
to  mark  the  division  between  the  seekers  of  beauty  and  the  seekers 
of  truth.  Both  Walker  and  Blum  are  notable  executants,  their 
technique  is  brilliant  and  interesting  in  itself,  and  both  occasionally 
have  imitated  with  surprising  skill  the  handling  of  other  men  ;  but  they 
have  not  imitated  the  same  men,  nor  is  there  any  other  resemblance 
between  them.  Blum  began  as  an  enthusiastic  admirer  of  Fortuny, 
whose  influence  shows  through  all  his  early  work,  in  his  pen  draw- 
ings, his  etchings,  his  pastels,  his  water-colors,  and  his  oil  paintings, 
for  he  tried  all  mediums  for  the  pleasure  of  developing  the  pe- 
culiar qualities  of  each.  Often,  as  with  Fortuny,  the  subject  was 
nothing  but  an  excuse  for  a  display  of  a  skill  that  was  in  reality  the 
subject.  Every  bit  of  drawing  was  crisp  and  dashing,  every  spot 
of  color  sparkled,  the  ink  lines  or  the  water-color  washes  were 
touched  on  with  a  cleverness  that  savored  of  legerdemain.  With 
time  his  outlook  widened.  His  Venice  pictures  have  something 
of  Rico  and  something  of  Whistler.  He  saw  and  studied  the 
Dutch  water-colorists ;  a  long  stay  in  Japan  made  him  acquainted 
with  its  art.  But  whichever  of  these  varying  inspirations  he  follows, 
his  work  itself  is  good  and  does  not  need  the  reputation  of  its 
prototype  to  sustain  it.  In  fact,  the  things  which  seem  most  closely 
to  approach  some  model  when  actually  compared  with  it  only  show 
how  different  they  are.  Through  them  all  is  seen  Blum's  own  tem- 
perament, brilliant,  witty,  with  a  touch  of  poetry  and  a  touch  of 
sentiment.  In  his  later  work  he  has  worked  out  a  techniqtie  of  his 
own,  and  shows  less  and  less  disposition  to  imitate  others  until  in 
his  great  decorations  the  only  remaining  trace  of  his  early  tenden- 
cies is  the  determination  to  make  every  portion  interesting  in  itself, 
and  interesting  in  the  way  that  it  is  executed. 

Walker  never  played  the  sedulous  ape  (to  borrow  Stevenson's 
phrase)  to  other  men's  work  to  any  such  extent  as  Blum.  In 
being  influenced  by  Millet  and  Troyon  he  but  followed  the  general 
tendency  of  the  time,  nor  has  Millet's  method  of  painting  been 
copied  by  him  so  much  as  his  feeling  for  largeness  of  composition 
and  for  enveloping  atmosphere.  Above  all  he  has  been  influenced 
by  Millet's  sentiment  toward  the  soil  and  its  workers.  This  senti- 
ment had  an  enormous  vogue  in  America;  it  was  fostered  by  tales 


494 


HIsrORY    OF    AMERICAN    PAINTING 


of  his  poverty,  by  sales  of  his  pictures  at  sensational  prices,  by 
reproductions  of  his  work  in  the  magazines,  and  by  much  uncriti- 
cal writincT  everywhere;  but  at  base  the  admiration  was  sincere  and 
profound.  The  .American  public  love  and  compreliend  sentiment 
in  a  work  of  art  as  they  do  not  technical  merits  (many  of  them  still 
think  Millet  a  poor  draftsman);  and,  moreover,  Millet's  sentiment 
needed  no  tinge  of  I^uropean  culture  or  tradition  for  its  comprehen- 


I'k;.  io8.  —  IJi.iM  :  SiKi.KT  Scene  in  Tt)Kio. 
[Copyright,  1893,  by  Charles  Scriliner's  Sons.] 

sion  and  touched  the  great  symj)athetic,  democratic  heart  which 
had  but  recently  freed  the  slave  and  h(^ped  to  make  of  its  land  a 
refuge  for  all  the  oppressed. 

In  s])ite  of  this,  how^ever,  Millet's  influence  on  our  painting  is  less 
than  that  of  the  others  of  the  Barbizon  school.  American  painters 
and  students  were  among  his  earliest  admirers,  and  several  of  them 
while  in  I'' ranee  ])ainted  subjects  somewliat  resembling  his;  but 
when  they  returned  home  tliey  found  it  impossible  to  convey  the 
spirit  of  Millet  in  terms  of  the  American  farmer — he  was  too  inde- 


RECENT   FIGURE    PAINTING   IN    AMERICA  495 

pendent,  too  sophisticated  ;  liis  niacliinery,  his  reapers  and  threshers, 
lacked  the  epic  note;  tliey  were  new  like  his  clothes,  his  house,  and 
all  his  surroundings.  There  was  no  long,  intimate  association  of 
the  man  with  the  soil,  each  moulding  the  other  until  l^oth  were  in 
harmony. 

The  result  was  that  the  artists  either  continued  to  paint  French 
peasants  or  sought  a  newer  inspiration.  Walker  alone  found  among 
the  habitants  of  Canada  a  corner  of  the  new  world  whose  manners 
and  customs  were  older  and  simpler  by  far  than  anything  that 
Barbizon  could  offer.  It  is  seventeenth-  or  eighteenth-century 
France,  uncontaminated  by  later  intellectual  or  mechanical  develop- 
ments. The  families  are  rooted  in  the  soil  and  as  the  year  revolves 
they  go  through  the  old  august  labors  of  ploughing,  sowing,  and 
reaping,  as  simply  and  naturally  as  the  birds  build  their  nests  or 
the  salmon  mount  the  rivers  in  the  spring.  When  Walker  paints 
this  life,  he  gives  like  Millet  its  large,  ample,  classic  simplicity. 
His  works  have  the  same  Virgilian  touch  of  sympathy  with  the 
field  and  the  forest,  but  the  human  interest  is  not  so  dominant  or 
profound.  Millet's  peasants  are  himself,  their  families  are  his 
family.  They  are  obscure  of  thought  and  inarticulate  of  expression, 
but  he  has  felt  and  thought  for  them  and  made  himself  their  spokes- 
man. There  is  no  such  intimate  personal  unity  between  Walker 
and  his  habitants.  He  likes  and  sympathizes  with  them,  but  after 
all  they  are  only  a  part  of  the  fauna  of  his  pictures,  like  the  sheep 
or  the  great  oxen  ;  what  he  is  painting  is  the  spring  ploughing  or 
the  winter  wood-cutting. 

If  the  sentiment  of  Walker,  for  all  its  similarity,  is  always  dis- 
tinct from  that  of  Millet,  his  handling  at  times  is  absolutely  that  of 
Troyon.  This  is  not  a  reproach.  Troyon's  technique  was  the  most 
masterly  and  painterlike  of  any  one  of  the  group  of  French  land- 
scapists  with  which  he  is  usually  associated,  but  it  differed  from  that 
of  men  like  Diaz  or  Dupre  mainly  by  its  sureness  and  perfection. 
No  one  knows  so  well  as  he  all  the  varieties  of  texture  and  surface: 
how  to  simplify  too  aggressive  details,  how  to  mass  the  light  and 
dark,  how  to  paint  a  sky  of  solidly  modelled  but  luminous  clouds, 
to  blend  the  distance  into  it,  to  glaze  rich,  transparent  shadows  in 
the  foreground  and    then    to  put  over  them  sure  touches  of  solid 


496  HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

impasto  that  glow  like  spots  of  real  sunlight  on  the  trees,  the  grasses, 
and  the  red  or  white  coats  of  the  cattle.  This  perfection  of  work- 
manship of  Troyon's  in  his  smaller  canvases  (it  is  less  interesting 
in  his  great  Salon  pictures)  Walker  has  succeeded  either  directly 
or  indirectly  in  acquiring  jDcrfectly.  He  can  reproduce  it  when  he 
will  in  a  manner  that  need  fear  no  comparison  with  his  prototype. 
He  does  not  always  do  so.  As  befits  a  man  of  a  later  generation, 
his  coloring  is  more  varied,  more  subtle,  and  usually  with  more  of 
blue  and  less  of  brown  in  the  shadows,  and  his  handling  is  usually 
looser,  more  free  but  not  less  sure.  This  is  especiallv  true  of  his 
smaller  pictures  and  his  water-colors,  which  latter  closely  resemble 
Mauve ;  but  in  this  case  there  is  no  necessity  of  referring  the  simi- 
larity to  imitation,  conscious  or  unconscious.  It  is  the  natural 
development  of  Troyon's  technique,  used  with  an  increasing  ease 
and  adapted  to  a  swifter,  lighter  medium.  Besides,  excellent  artist 
as  Mauve  is,  in  the  works  where  they  most  closely  resemble  each 
other,  Walker  is  distinctly  the  better  —  more  varied  in  subject,  more 
subtle  in  color  if  not  in  tone,  more  sympathetic  in  drawing  and  not 
inferior  in  sentiment. 

The  charm  of  Blum  s  pictures  lies  in  the  execution  rather  than 
in  the  subjects,  which  are  chosen  from  every  land  except  Amer- 
ica. The  same  cannot  be  said  of  Walker,  who  paints  a  land  that 
geographically  is  American  and  very  near  to  the  United  States, 
yet  it  may  be  questioned  if  he  gives  its  peculiar,  characteristic  es- 
sence. That  he  paints  it  truthfully  none  can  doubt,  but  there  is  a 
suspicion  that  he  chooses  in  it  the  scenes  and  effects  which  ap- 
proach nearest  to  those  admired  and  painted  by  French  masters. 
The  same  suspicion  arises  in  the  case  of  some  of  our  best  landscap- 
ists,  and  among  the  figure  painters  the  disposition  is  curiously  small 
to  do  as  Fromentin  says  they  should  —  paint  the  portrait  of  the 
American  people.  The  quest  for  beauty  dominates  that  for  truth. 
There  is  hardly  a  painter  who  could  be  depended  upon  to  refrain 
from  ])inning  a  bow  of  bright-colored  riljbon  to  a  dress  if  it  gave 
him  a  wished-for  spot  of  color,  no  matter  how  much  the  addition 
might  conflict  with  the  immutable  rules  of  the  milliners  of  the  day. 
Two  or  three  centuries  from  now  those  curious  to  learn  what  man- 
ner of  people  lived  at  the  beginning  of  the  twentieth  century  can 


FK..   luy.  — lluKAlK)    WAl.KLK:    <  »Xl:^    DRINKING 
[Copyright,  1902,  by  N.  E.  Montross.] 


RECENT   FIGURE    PAINTING    IN   AMERICA  499 

cull  out  from  the  art  production  of  France,  of  (icrmany,  or  of  Eng- 
land an  infinity  of  [pictures,  many  of  hioh  artistic  merit,  that  will 
give  to  them  the  very  age  and  body  of  the  time.  From  America 
they  will  get  hardly  anything  of  the  sort,  at  least  in  oil   jxiinting. 

It  is  strange  that  it  should  be  so,  for  we  do  not  lack  the  ability  to 
see  ourselves  with  sincerity  and  sympathy;  the  illustrators  are  there 
to  prove  it.  They  are  not  to  be  discussed  in  this  volume,  so  it  must 
suffice  to  recall  out  of  many  names  the  wonderful  rendering  by 
Frost  of  our  great  democratic  life  on  the  farm,  in  the  workshops,  in 
the  crowded  quarters  of  our  great  cities,  and  in  the  raw  little  towns 
of  the  far  West ;  and  Smedley's  pictures  of  the  wealthier  classes, 
with  the  pretty  girls  sitting  in  the  parlors  in  wonderful  toilets,  and 
the  well-groomed  old  gentlemen  in  their  offices  or  clubs.  These 
things  are  not  only  true,  but  they  are  typical  and  illuminative; 
but  no  painter  has  worked  with  the  more  deliberate  choice  of  sub- 
ject and  the  ampler  treatment  that  he  should  command  to  mirror 
our  life  to  us  more  perfectly  or  more  profoundly.  No  one  has 
painted  the  political  or  financial  or  social  habits  of  to-day.  It  is 
not  at  once  clear  why  this  should  be  so.  The  same  training  that 
our  artists  received  in  the  Paris  ateliers  has  enabled  the  French 
painters  to  fill  the  Salons  with  transcripts  from  life  of  all  degrees  of 
merit.  Stewart  could  paint  his  "  Hunt  Ball  "  and  like  subjects  there, 
but  they  are  not  done  here. 

For  this  there  may  be  suggested  a  number  of  contributing 
causes.  One  is  the  transitory  and  trivial  character  of  the  setting 
of  our  social  life.  This  does  not  refer  so  much  to  the  vagaries  of 
dress,  which  is  on  the  whole  one  of  the  most  satisfactory  artistic 
factors  in  our  modern  life,  as  to  the  mass  of  accessories  with  which 
our  existence  is  cluttered  up  —  furniture  and  bric-a-brac,  wall-papers 
and  carpets.  Every  detail  is  usually  inartistic  in  itself  and  almost  cer- 
tainly incongruous  in  its  surroundings,  and  all  avow  their  unsatisfac- 
tory character  by  shifting  and  changing  more  swiftly  than  even  the 
styles  in  dresses.  All  of  this  has  at  times  been  painted,  but  such 
a  task  was  distasteful  to  the  younger  men.  They  had  for  the  most 
part  learned  during  their  studies  abroad  to  dislike  the  average 
American  furnishings.  They  avoided  them  in  their  own  surround- 
ings as  well  as  they  could  and  did  not  much  care  to  elaborate  them 


500 


HISTORY    OF    AMKRICAN    PAINTING 


in  their  pictures.  When  draftsmen  like  Smedley  left  illustrating 
for  work  in  oil  it  was  to  portraiture  and  landscape  that  they  turned, 
and  Tarbell's  "  Crocheting,"  which  suggests  Vermeer  in  its  tran- 
quillity and  the  beauty  and  perfection  of  its  lighting,  does  not 
impress  us  at  all  as  holding  within  itself  an  epitome  of  the  home 
.  life  of  its  time  as  the  works  of  the  Dutch  masters  do. 

Life  in  the  country  and  in  the  o})en  air  is  more  inspiring  than 
that  penned  up  in  city  rooms  and  it  has  been  more  painted,  but  even 
there  the  tendency  has  been  to  make  a  thing  of  beauty  rather  than 
to  give  the  "  true  truth."  Not  only  the  artists  but  their  patrons  pre- 
ferred it  so.  The  American  man  finds  enough  of  prose  in  the  day's 
work.  It  does  not  sadden  him;  on  the  contrary,  he  enjoys  it  and 
puts  all  his  energies  into  it,  and  when  he  turns  from  it  he  demands 
that  art  shall  do  its  duty  in  furnishing  delight  and  that  uncompli- 
cated by  too  much  subtlety.  He  dislikes  problem  plays  that  finish 
badly  and  realistic  novels  that  simply  give  again  the  life  he  knows, 
and  he  wants  his  pictures  beautiful  or  at  least  pretty.  He  doesn't 
know  anything  about  art,  but  he  knows  what  he  likes,  as  he  proudly 
proclaims,  and  no  perfection  of  craftsmanship  is  going  to  make  him 
change  his  likes. 

There  was,  besides,  a  practical  reason  perhaps  more  potent  than 
any  of  the  others  for  this  lack  of  realistic  painting.  During  the 
eighties  and  nineties,  French  and  German  genre  pictures  had  an 
enormous  popularity.  The  dealers'  galleries  were  filled  with  them, 
and  they  were  bought  greedily  by  a  public  which  would  not  consider 
native  work.  American  oil  paintings  were  almost  unsalable,  but  for 
illustration  there  was  a  steady  demand  with  sure  pay.  Most  of  the 
figure  painters  worked  at  times  for  the  publishers  and  those  of  them 
who  had  the  facility  and  other  qualifications  necessary  to  reproduce 
the  life  about  them  in  a  way  acceptable  to  the  readers  of  the  maga- 
zines were  sure  of  incomes  far  higher  than  they  could  gain  by  more 
ambitious  work. 

These  are  all  excellent  reasons  why  America  should  not  have 
to-day  painters  to  interpret  her  daily  life  and  yet  one  suspects  also 
that  it  is  partly  a  matter  of  chance.  J.  G.  Brown,  Winslow  Homer, 
liastman  Johnson,  all  painted  certain  sides  of  it,  the  last  named  having 
even  represented  the  interior  of  the  New  York  house  of  the  seventies, 


RECENT    FKIURE    PAINTING    IN    AMERICA  50I 

and  not  unacceptably.  There  are  reasons  why  the  younger  genera- 
tion should  be  less  inclined  to  such  subjects,  but  they  are  not  prohib- 
itive. Apparently  the  predestined  man  might  have  occurred  just 
as  Winslow  Homer  did.  Several  have  touched  upon  the  province. 
Ulrich,  after  he  had  painted  his  "  Glass  Blowers,"  a  marvel  of  minute, 
careful  observation  and  rendering,  did  also  a  "  Land  of  Promise,"  a 
scene  of  arriving  immigrants  at  Castle  Garden  which  was  quite  as  fine 
technically  and  with  a  profounder  meaning.  Douglas  Volk,  Edgar 
M.  Ward,  August  Franzen,  and  many  others  have  all  done  among 
other  things  scenes  from  our  country  life.  Another  group  has  pre- 
served the  traditions  of  the  now  vanished  frontier  and  the  lone 
guardianship  of  it  against  the  Indians  by  our  little  army.  E.  Irving 
Couse  and  De  Cost  Smith  have  told  the  story  of  the  red  man,  his 
life  and  habits  ;  Charles  Schreyvogle,  the  fights  and  friendships  of 
the  cavalrymen  who  held  the  settlements  against  his  inroads;  but 
the  authoritative  chronicler  of  the  whole  western  land  from  Assini- 
boine  to  Mexico  and  of  all  men  and  beasts  dwelling  therein  is  Fred- 
eric Remington.  He,  at  least,  cannot  be  said  to  have  sacrificed  truth 
to  grace.  The  raw,  crude  light,  the  burning  sand,  the  pitiless  blue 
sky,  surround  the  lank,  sunburned  men  who  ride  the  rough  horses 
and  fight  or  drink  or  herd  cattle  as  the  case  may  be.  The  record  is 
invaluable  and  the  execution  is  direct  and  sure.  Perhaps  it  would 
lose  something  of  its  force  if  it  were  completer,  but  even  in  his  work 
in  oil  Remington  is  an  illustrator  rather  than  a  painter.  The  sub- 
ject is  more  to  him  than  the  purely  artistic  qualities  displayed  in  its 
representation,  and  the  same  may  be  said  of  some  of  the  other  men 
just  mentioned. 

There  was  one  man,  however,  who  was  a  painter  and  who 
might  have  become  the  recorder  of  the  simpler,  wider  side  of 
our  common  life  had  it  not  been  for  his  untimely  death.  It  is 
noticeable  that  Thomas  Hovenden,  like  J.  G.  Brown,  Guy,  and 
other  painters  of  American  life,  was  born  abroad  (in  County  Cork, 
Ireland,  1S40)  and  did  not  come  to  America  until  1863.  He  had 
begun  painting  in  Cork ;  he  worked  here  at  the  Academy  of  Design, 
and  in  1874  went  to  Paris,  where  he  studied  six  years  under  Cabanel. 
The  apprenticeship  was  long  and  the  school  training  very  com- 
plete, but  it  was  some  time  before  he  found  the  work  fitted  to  him. 


502  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

He  painted  Brittany  scenes  in  France  and  after  his  return  "  Elaine," 
a  composition  of  many  figures,  laborious  and  frigid.  About  the 
same  time,  however,  he  began  a  series  of  studies  of  negro  life,  "  Cliloe 
and  Sam,"  "  Dem  was  Good  Oie  Times,"  and  the  rest.  They  were 
followed  by  "  In  from  the  JMeadows,"  "The  X'illage  Blacksmith,"  and 
similar  subjects  culminating  with  "  Breaking  Home  Ties,"  a  country 
boy  leaving  home  to  make  his  fortune.  It  is  as  good  a  picture  of 
the  kind  as  has  been  painted  in  the  country  —  less  artistic,  per- 
haps, than  Eastman  Johnson's  work,  but  still  excellent  in  its  crafts- 
manship and  profound  and  sincere  in  its  sentiment. 

It  is,  of  course,  the  story-telling  picture,  the  anecdote  is  forced  on 
the  spectator  as  it  is  not  by  Johnson,  still  less  by  the  old  Dutch  mas- 
ters—  but  the  story  is  told  clearly  and  beautifully.  The  sentiment 
rings  true.  The  Spartan  repression  of  emotion  between  the  mother 
and  the  great  overgrown  boy,  the  sisters,  the  stage  driver  with  the 
bag,  the  flawless  neatness  and  comfort  of  the  room,  are  all  typical. 
The  same  typical  quality  is  in  another,  unfinished  picture,  representing 
the  taking  possession  of  their  section  of  prairie  land  by  a  young  farmer 
with  his  w'ife  and  child.  It  tried  to  show  how  the  external  problems 
of  life  were  being  w^orked  out  on  the  new  soil.  Through  both  pic- 
tures, and  in  fact  through  all  Hovenden's  work,  there  runs  the  simple, 
kindly  character  which  showed  in  every  action  of  the  artist  and  which 
glorified  his  end,  for  he  gave  his  life  instantly  and  unhesitatingly  to 
save  a  child  from  being  killed  by  a  railway  train.  It  was  a  serious 
loss  to  our  art.  He  was  in  the  prime  of  life,  his  important  works, 
the  ones  in  which  he  had  painted  most  skilfully  and  displayed  the 
deepest  feeling,  had  been  produced  in  the  preceding  three  or  four 
years,  and  it  seems  but  reasonable  to  suppose  that  had  he  been 
spared  he  would  have  developed  still  further. 

One  of  Hovenden's  pictures  was  historical  —  the  "  Last  Moments 
of  John  Brown."  The  subject,  the  unsubdued  old  agitator  stopping 
as  he  walked  to  the  scaffold  to  kiss  a  negro  child,  must  have  appealed 
to  the  artist;  but  the  picture  was  an  order,  and  he  did  no  other  work 
of  the  kind.  Few  of  the  recent  artists  have  tried  to  paint  their 
country's  history,  such  subjects,  like  the  social  life,  being  left  mostly 
to  the  illustrators.  Julian  Scott,  who  had  served  himself  in  the  army 
from  1861  to  1863  and  afterward   studied  under   Leutze,   has  done  a 


RECENT   FIGURE    PAINTING   IN    AMERICA 


503 


number  of  war  scenes  ;  but  a  more  skilful  artist  is  Gilbert  Gaul,  whose 
series  of  pictures  of  the  conflicts  of  the  blue  and  the  gray,  "Charg- 
ing the  Battery,"  "  Saving  the  Colors,"  and  the  rest  bring  back  the 
almost  forgotten  days  and  stir  the  blood  like  the  sight  of  the  lines  of 
veterans  on  Decoration  Day.  They  are  excellently  well  painted  and 
moreover  they  are  truthful, — the  types  of  faces,  the  ragged  uniforms, 
the  country  fought  over  with  its  stone  walls  or  fences,  all  the  little 
tricks  of  attitude  and  expression,  are  racy  of    the  soil.     W.   B.  T. 


Fig.  1 10.  —  HovENDEN  :  Breaking  Home  Ties. 


Trego,  too,  has  shown  the  "  Light  Artillery,"  the  wheels  sunk  to  the 
hubs  in  the  mud,  while  the  weary,  straining  horses  and  men  force  the 
guns  along  a  road  like  a  morass  in  the  pouring  rain. 

Others  have  occasionally  chosen  a  subject  from  the  same  time, 
but  the  American  soldier  has  had  no  De  Neuville  or  Detaille  to 
record  his  prowess,  and  with  our  earlier  heroes  the  case  is  even  worse. 
Howard  Pyle  is  the  only  man  who  seems  to  know  thoroughly  the 
colonial  and  Revolutionary  epoch,  and  he  is  above  all  an  illustrator, 
though  he  has  done  enough  independent  work  to  permit  mention  of 


504 


HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 


him  among  the  painters  and  to  merit  a  special  note  of  thanks  in  that 
he  has  represented  the  founders  of  the  RepubHc  as  they  were, — 
sturdy,  hard-headed  folk,  with  strong  characters  and  few  graces,  who 
wore  the  rather  rigid  costumes  of  the  time  with  dignity  and  not  like 
singers  in  comic  opera  or  dancing  masters.  It  is  difficult  not  to  go 
farther  with  Pyle  and  discuss  his  other  work,  his  Knights  of  the 
Round  Table,  his  mediaeval  jDoets  and  ladies,  and  his  pirates  (surely 
never  before  were  pirates  so  satisfactorily  bloody-minded  offered  for 
the  delectation  of  youth) ;  but  though  frequently  completely  and 
elaborately  painted  in  oil,  these  subjects  were  yet  intended  for 
books  or  periodicals,  and  so  must  count  as  illustrations. 

Outside  all  these  various  groups  of  landscape  and  figure  paint- 
ing, the  description  and  classification  of  which  has  been  attempted, 
and  equally  outside  of  portraiture  and  decorative  painting  which  are 
to  follow,  there  remains  an  enormous  mass  of  work,  perhaps  equal  to 
all  the  rest,  too  great  to  be  treated  individually  and  yet  too  varied  for 
successful  generalization,  the  painters  themselves  adding  to  the 
confusion  by  their  changes  of  style  and  subject.  There  are  tran- 
scripts from  everyday  life  and  its  familiar  detail,  and  contributions 
from  the  picturesqueness  of  distant  lands,  strange  peoples  and  places, 
character  heads  of  old  men,  mothers  with  children,  girls  reading  or 
walking  or  sitting  in  hammocks,  kneeling  angels  with  gold  halos, 
bits  of  old  houses,  a  man  with  a  sword  or  a  lady  with  a  rose,  still-life 
and  decorative  panels,  —  all  the  things,  in  short,  of  which  the  average 
exhibition  is  made  up  and  which  in  their  totality  represent  what 
the  man  in  the  street  understands  by  a  picture.  They  are  not,  as 
a  rule,  of  such  high  inspiration  as  to  be  classed  as  ideal  work  nor 
of  such  deep  insight  into  character  as  to  be  typically  realistic,  but  they 
are  well  done.  Technical  standards  are  understood  now,  and  incom- 
petence is  rarely  displayed  in  the  larger  annual  shows.  The  work 
seen  there  is  generally  speaking  good,  one  would  say  on  the  average 
quite  as  good,  though  in  a  different  way,  as  is  found  in  the  Salons 
and  Academy  exhibitions  of  Europe. 

Recalling  the  past,  numbers  of  pictures  like  some  of  the  children 
of  Sergeant  Kendall,  the  "  Boy  with  an  Arrow,"  by  Volk,  the  beau- 
tiful ideal  compositions  of  Henry  O.  Walker,  or  some  of  the  early 
genre  pictures  of  Eakins,  "  Mending  the  Net,"  or  the  "  Chess  Players," 


RECENT   FIGURE    PAINTING   IN    AMERICA  qo 


D^D 


come  to  mind  and  seem  imperatively  to  demand  mention.  Most 
of  these  painters,  however,  are  to  be  spoken  of  in  other  connections, 
but  some  record  must  be  made  of  the  animal  painters  represented 
by  J.  H.  Dolph,  William  H.  Howe,  and  Henry  R.  Poore.  They 
merit  it,  for  even  Dolph,  though  forced  by  the  exigencies  of  the 
popular  demand  to  produce  an  interminable  series  of  puppies  and 
kittens,  was  yet  never  led  into  slighting  his  work,  while  the  cattle  of 
Howe  and  the  hunting  dogs  of  Poore  touch  a  higher  plane.  They 
are  pictures  well  drawn  and  well  composed  in  excellent  landscape 
settings,  which  in  the  case  of  Poore  are  becoming  more  and  more 
important,  so  that  his  figures  are  often  but  an  incident  of  his  lumi- 
nous autumn  woods. 

Last  of  all,  mention  should  be  made  of  the  most  recent 
development  of  artists  who  are  now  beginning  to  be  called  the 
younger  men  and  to  be  matched  against  those  who  bore  the  title 
twenty-five  years  ago.  There  is  no  such  sharp  line  of  demarca- 
tion as  there  was  in  the  seventies.  American  painting  is  now 
in  touch  with  that  of  the  rest  of  the  world,  and  changes  are  made 
gradually  here  as  elsewhere,  but  from  this  very  intimacy  with  foreign 
art  currents  it  was  inevitable  that  there  should  be  developments 
of  groups  corresponding  to  the  "  New  Salons  "  and  "  Secessions  " 
of  the  Old  World.  Academic  traditions  and  official  influences  have 
no  such  power  here  as  there,  consequently  there  has  been  no 
such  organized  opposition,  nor  has  the  work  been  pushed  by 
opposition  into  the  extravagances  sometimes  seen  in  Paris  or 
Munich ;  but  the  artistic  principles  of  the  new  school  have  their 
followers.  These  principles  consist,  for  the  most  part,  in  a  revolt 
against  what  is  commonplace  and  tedious,  no  matter  how  much  labor 
or  learning  is  displayed.  The  execution  and  conception  must  seem 
facile  and  spontaneous,  and  above  all  the  work  must  be  personal 
and  striking  ;  given  these  qualities,  a  painful  accuracy  can  well 
be  spared.  As  for  the  w^orks  of  the  elders,  even  if  they  had  at 
one  time  merit,  their  repetition  during  a  generation  has  enabled 
their  message  to  be  assimilated  and  they  are  now  but  the  most 
wearisome  of  platitudes. 

There  is  nothing  particularly  novel  about  these  principles;  ris- 
ing generations   have  proclaimed   them   often  enough    before,  and 


5o6  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

they  are  as  sound  as  general  principles  can  well  be,  in  spite  of 
the  fact  that  the  "  School  of  Athens "  successfully  avoids  most  of 
them  and  still  remains  a  meritorious  work.  Their  interest  lies 
in  their  aiDplication,  which  in  the  present  case  has  something  of 
the  tradition  of  Manet  and  something  of  the  sentiment  of  Whistler, 
both  tempered  by  individual  originality.  Form  must  be  rendered 
by  mass  and  not  by  line  ;  there  must  be  no  tinting  of  a  carefully 
prepared  underlying  drawing  but  a  broad,  painterlike  laying  on  of 
pigment  with  masterly  and  striking  brush  work  and  if  possible  some 
peculiarity  of  handling  which  shall  serve  as  the  artist's  sign  manual. 

Robert  Henri  is  perhaps  the  most  characteristic  of  this  younger 
group,  for  although  he  is,  strictly  speaking,  a  portrait  painter,  his 
best  works  are  not  from  the  casual  sitter  of  commerce,  but  from 
carefully  chosen  models,  and  are  hardly  more  portraits  than  the 
"Virgins"  of  Thayer.  These  latter,  however,  are  classic  and  simple. 
The  girls  in  "  wdiite  "  or  "  black  "  of  Henri  are  modern,  complex, 
and  rather  mysterious,  as  they  stand  slender  and  graceful,  with  their 
faces  showing  light  against  the  dark  background.  The  workman- 
ship, as  principles  of  the  group  demand,  is  broad  and  sure,  insist- 
ently masterly,  with  great  richness  of  sui^face  and  harmony  of  tone 
in  the  simple  schemes  of  black  and  white  and  flesh-color. 

An  even  stronger  contrast  of  light  and  dark,  and  a  handling 
even  more  aggressive,  is  seen  in  some  of  the  canvases  of  Jonas  Lie, 
which  are  dashed  in  with  the  fnria  of  a  sketch  and  retain  much 
of  a  sketch's  vigor,  and  at  times  something  of  its  inaccuracy. 
The  drawing  of  Jerome  Myers,  on  the  contrary,  is  rather  careful 
and  there  are  no  forcible  contrasts  of  dark  and  light.  His  street 
scenes  in  the  j)oorer  quarters  belong  in  the  group  more  from  the 
mellow  tone  in  which  they  are  enveloped,  the  simplification  of 
uninteresting  detail  and  their  sentiment,  than  from  any  strangeness 
of  composition  or  of  brush  work.  This  is  to  be  found  in  the  pictures 
of  Maurice  B.  Prendergast,  who  translates  the  groups  of  children 
and  nurses  playing  in  the  parks  or  on  the  beaches  into  a  curiously 
decorative  mosaic  of  pink,  IdIuc,  and  green  spots,  which  give  in 
their  color  and  texture  something  of  the  joyousness  suited  to  the 
occasion. 

But  the  best  jjicture  of  childhood  as  it  disports  itself  oi  masse 


FIG.   III.  — HENRI:    VOUxXG    \VOMAN    IN    BLACK. 


RECENT   FICiURE   PAINTING   IN    AMERICA  509 

in  the  open  air  is  William  J.  Glackens's  "May  Party,"  where  a 
crowd  of  pupils  from  the  public  schools  play,  roll  about,  or  scuffle 
on  the  grass  under  the  trees  of  the  park.  Glackens  is  best  known 
as  an  illustrator.  He  has  made  a  few  careful  and  elaborate  com- 
positions, but  many  more  drawings  in  a  style  somewhere  between 
Charles  Keene  and  Forain,  slightly  indicated,  with  little  light  and 
shade  or  background,  but  with  much  character  and  expression  in 
the  little  figures.  All  of  this  expressiveness  is  given  in  the  "  May 
Party,"  which  is  realized  with  truth  and  humor,  and  moreover 
painted  brilliantly  and  broadly,  the  composition  holding  together 
well  in  tone  and  color.  Glackens  has  already  painted  some  figures 
and  portraits,  but  nothing  in  quite  the  same  vein  as  the  "  May 
Party,"  and  should  he  continue  in  it  he  might  take  the  vacant 
place  of  recorder  of  the  popular  life. 

Thus  far  the  painters  referred  to  have  all  worked  in  oil.  WH.cn 
any  were  skilled  in  other  mediums  besides  that,  mention  has  usually 
been  made  of  the  fact.  It  is  not  possible  or  particularly  desirable 
to  speak  at  length  of  those  wdio  have  worked  solely  in  such  other 
mediums  which  practically  are  limited  to  pastel  and  water-color,  for 
painting  with  turpentine,  benzine,  and  petroleum  essences  or  varnishes 
does  not  vaiy  materially  from  that  in  oil,  and  not  many  have  been 
curious  to  go  beyond  the  ordinary  materials  obtainable  at  the  color 
shops.  Experiments  in  true  fresco,  in  tempera,  or  in  wax  or  egg 
medium  have  been  so  rare  and  inconclusive  as  to  be  unimportant. 
Pastel  has  been  employed  by  many  men  but  irregularly,  no  one  has 
limited  himself  to  it  alone,  and  few  have  cared  to  develop  its  full 
resources.  Of  water-color  there  has  been,  on  the  contrarv,  an  enor- 
mous  production.  All  over  the  country,  water-color  societies  have 
been  formed  and  exhibitions  held,  its  apparent  facility  commending 
it  to  all  classes  of  amateurs.  The  medium  has  been  used  in  every 
possible  way  and  naturally  much  feeble  and  mediocre  work  has  been 
produced.  Even  the  better  exhibitions  are  apt  to  show  a  prepon- 
derance of  work  which  is  merely  pretty,  but  the  best  is  very  good. 
Very  little  of  it,  however,  is  done  by  painters  who  confine  themselves 
to  the  medium,  using  it  alone. 

Mrs.  Sarah  C.  Sears  has  painted  a  number  of  ideal  heads  in  water- 
color,  recalling  in  their  refinements  and  dignity  the  work  of  Thayer; 


510  HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

and  Frank  Hopkinson  Smith  has  produced  in  the  same  medium  his 
seiies  of  views  of  Venice,  of  Holland,  of  England  —  but  especially 
of  Venice.  They  are  widely  known  and  admired,  these  glimpses  of 
little  canals  hemmed  in  by  old  jDalaces  or  vine-covered  walls,  these 
bits  from  the  Piazza  or  the  Riva  degli  Schiavoni  or  stretches  of 
water  ending  in  the  great  dome  of  the  Salute,  and  the  admiration  is 
deserved.  They  are  not  emotional,  they  are  not  subtle,  they  are  not 
"tonal,"  but  they  are  very  charming  with  their  delicately  colored 
skies,  their  luminous  air,  their  soft,  sunlit  marbles  and  clear,  cool 
shadows.  The  execution  is  exhilarating,  it  is  so  sure,  with  such  an 
economy  of  resource  and  so  manifest  an  enthusiasm. 

These  two  and  a  very  few  besides  have  been  in  reality  water-color 
painters,  but  the  others  who  have  done  notable  work  have  either  been 
masters  in  other  mediums,  like  La  Farge,  Horatio  Walker,  Winslow 
Homer,  and  Blum,  or  else  they  have  been  illustrators.  It  is  hard  to 
draw  a  line  between  the  two  camps  and  to  decide  that  Albert  Sterner 
and  Arthur  I.  Keller,  for  instance,  are  not  painters  ;  and  logic  has  still 
greater  violence  done  it  when  the  title  is  denied  to  Maxfield  Parrish 
because  his  very  complete  and  beautiful  paintings  in  oil  are  made 
to  be  reproduced  in  the  magazines.  Jessie  Wilcox  Smith,  Violet 
Oakley,  and  Elizabeth  Shippen  Green  are  naturally  grouped  to- 
gether in  the  minds  of  all  those  acquainted  with  their  works,  and  yet 
the  fact  that  one  of  them  happens  to  have  done  an  important  piece 
of  decoration  separates  her  from  the  others.  The  divisions  are  dififi- 
cult,  and  yet  these  names  and  others  like  them  must  be  regretfully 
omitted,  for  if  they  w^ere  placed  among  the  painters  the  historian 
of  American  Illustration  would  have  but  an  ungrateful  task. 


ric;.   112.  — ALEXANDER:    A    PORTRAIT. 
[From  a  Copley  Print.     Copyright  by  Curtis  &  Cameron,  Publishers,  Boston.J 


CHAPTER   XXVI 

THE    MODERN    PORTRAIT    PAINTERS 

Portrait  Painting  a  Less  Important  Branch  of  American  Art  now  than  For- 
merly.—  Effect  of  the  Introduction  of  Photography.  —  Visits  of  Foreign  Por- 
trait Painters.  —  American  Portrait  Painters  of  the  Time.  —  Drawbacks  of 
the  Paris  School  Training.  —  Collins.  —  Eakins.  —  Beckwith. — Vinton. — De 
Camp.  —  Ale.xander.  —  Lockwood.  —  Porter.  —  Cecilia  Beaux.  —  Other  Portrait 
Painters.  —  The  Influence  of  the  Open-air  School.  —  Recent  Improved  Con- 
ditions. —  Miniatures 

In  the  earlier  days  of  American  art,  the  mcst  important  branch 
of  painting  was  portraiture.  It  is  ahiiost  the  only  branch  in  which 
examples  of  colonial  and  Revolutionary  work  remain,  and  even  in 
the  succeeding  period  it  maintained  its  supremacy.  Not  only  was  it 
more  practised,  but  the  work  done  was  better  than  in  other  branches 
until  well  after  the  middle  of  the  last  century.  Since  then  there  has 
been  a  change.  Portraiture  has  become  less  important  as  compared 
with  other  forms  of  figure  painting  and  especially  with  landscape,  and 
besides  it  may  be  said  that,  in  spite  of  some  notable  exceptions,  it  has 
developed  less  brilliantly. 

The  main  cause  for  this  diminished  importance  is  not  far  to  seek. 
In  his  Annals  of  the  National  Academy  of  Design,  Cummings 
gives  a  copy  of  the  letter  of  invitation  sent  him  in  1839  by  a  pupil 
of  Daguerre  just  arrived  in  New  York,  in  which  he  was  invited  to  a 
first  view  of  a  collection  of  proofs  by  Daguerre  and  others,  "  perhaps 
the  most  interesting  objects  which  have  ever  been  exposed  to  the 
curiosity  of  a  man  of  taste."  Cummings  justly  objects  to  calling  the 
new  art  a  "marvellous  process  of  drawing,"  and  (writing  in  1861) 
compares  disadvantageously  the  works  shown  with  the  "  beautiful 
specimens  done  by  Brady,  Gurney,  and  Fredericks  " ;  but  he  seems 
to  have  had  no  impression  that  the  invention  was  even  then  chang- 
ing the  whole  course  of  American  art. 

Up  to  that  time  there  had  been  one  customary  and  authorized 
entrance  on  the  painter's  career.  The  Youth  of  Genius,  with  or 
2L  513 


SH 


HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 


without  instruction,  as  the  case  might  be,  succeeded  in  painting  a 
head  that  showed  some  likeness  to  the  sitter  and  then  started 
out  to  furnish  portraits  at  whatever  price  he  could  get.  In  every 
little  town  or  village  there  were  people  that  wanted  likenesses  of 
themselves  or  their  families,  and  they  contented  themselves  with 
poor  ones  if  they  could  get  no  better.  The  spread  of  intelli- 
gence, the  increase  of  wealth,  the  greater  facilities  for  intercom- 
munication, had  made  standards  of  taste  more  sophisticated,  but  that 
was  not  what  prevented  the  impecunious  painter  of  the  seventies  and 
eighties  from  going  through  the  country  in  the  old  way  doing  heads 
for  ten  or  twenty  dollars.  It  is  interesting  to  imagine  what  the  situ- 
ation would  be  to-day  had  not  photography  intervened.  We  are 
eighty  millions  of  people  not,  as  elsewhere,  for  the  most  part  peasants 
or  necessitous  laborers,  but  rather  a  bourgeoisie  with  money  to  spend. 
Allowing  but  one  portrait  painter  to  each  thousand,  there  would  be 
eighty  thousand  of  the  craft,  and  with  miniaturists  and  workers  in 
pastel,  crayon,  and  other  draftsmen  the  number  would  probably 
be  several  times  as  great.  Never  yet  has  painting  anywhere  been 
practised  on  such  a  scale,  and  it  is  fair  to  suppose  not  only  that  the 
best  of  the  artists  would  have  formed  a  school  of  portraitists  of  the 
highest  merit,  but  that  the  skill  so  acquired  would  have  spread  to 
other  branches  of  art.  The  vision  of  what  might  have  occurred  is 
entrancing ;  the  reality  was  different.  The  daguerreotype,  the  tin- 
type, the  carte-de-visite  or  the  crayon-finished  enlargement  replaced 
the  work  of  the  humble,  unskilled  craftsmen,  from  whom  the  better 
painters  developed. 

Another  influence  was  also  active  which  attacked  the  field  un- 
affected by  photography  so  that  not  only  did  those  of  small  or 
moderate  means  desert  the  American  painter,  but  tlie  wealthy  also 
ceased  more  and  more  to  patronize  him.  Some  of  the  older  men 
like  Huntington  or  Eastman  Johnson  still  kept  their  clients,  but 
the  younger  portrait  painters  of  the  eighties  suffered  as  all  painters 
suffered  at  tlie  time.  P^oreign  w^ork  was  having  its  greatest  vogue. 
The  purchasers  of  foreign  pictures  began  to  have  themselves  painted 
abroad  by  foreign  artists ;  but  soon  the  dealers  who  had  imported 
the  pictures  imported  also  the  painters,  so  that  it  was  no  longer  nec- 
essary to  cross  the  ocean  to  have  portraits  done  in  a  style  in  harmony 


FIG.  113.  — EAKINS:  THE   CELLO    FLAYER,    PENNSYLVANLV   ACADEMY, 


THE    MODERN    PORTRAIT   PAINTERS  517 

with  tlie  new  houses  and  new  furniture  and  by  artists  with  all  imag- 
inable medals  and  decorations. 

The  men  who  came  thus  under  the  sheltering  wing  of  the  great 
dealers  were  almost,  without  exception,  men  of  ability.  Some  of  them 
ranked  among  the  best  of  contemporary  portrait  painters.  The  work 
they  did  here  was  at  times  worthy  of  their  reputations  and  at  times 
not.  The  circumstances  under  which  they  labored  were  too  frankly 
mercenary  to  be  inspiring.  No  French  artist  could  pretend  even  to 
himself  that  he  journeyed  to  America  to  improve  his  art,  or  that  he 
cared  for  any  honors  that  were  to  be  won  here.  They  had  no  high 
opinion  of  the  taste  of  their  patrons,  and  when  they  did  their  best  it  was 
for  the  most  part  to  satisfy  their  own  consciences.  Those  artists  whose 
work  was  admired  for  its  artistic  quality  by  their  fellow-craftsmen 
and  by  the  severer  critics  had  less  success  here,  or  at  least  repeated 
their  visits  less  frequently,  than  what  may  be  called  the  society  por- 
trait painters  w^iose  regularly  recurring  visits  are  still  so  much  a  part 
of  painting  in  America  as  to  demand  some  notice. 

The  reputation  of  these  latter  artists  was  quite  as  widespread  as 
that  of  the  others,  their  medals  and  decorations  were  possibly  more 
numerous,  but  they  wore  them  with  a  difference.  Their  admirers 
came  from  a  different  class.  They  had  been  patronized  by  those 
highest  in  rank  or  most  abounding  in  wealth  or  most  prominent 
socially.  They  were  not  unskilful ;  on  the  contrary,  they  knew  their 
trade,  and  more.  They  worked  surely  and  swiftly,  the  drawing  was 
clever,  the  color  was  bright,  the  silks  and  satins  shimmered,  the 
texture  of  the  furs  and  laces  was  wonderful,  and  the  faces  of  the 
sitters  were  beautiful  but  yet  recognizable,  with  lips  that  smiled 
and  liquid  eyes  that  sparkled.  In  America  there  have  been  few 
dissenting  voices  in  the  chorus  of  admiration,  and  those  mostly  from 
artists  and  their  friends  who  may  justly  be  suspected  of  bias  and 
whose  opinions,  rarely  put  forward  so  as  to  have  any  wide  circu- 
lation, may  be  considered  as  negligible. 

In  Paris  (the  painters  under  consideration  are  mostly  Parisians) 
the  dissenting  group  is  larger  and  more  important.  In  it,  too,  there 
are  a  number  of  artists  and  art  critics  and  art  collectors,  but  the  opin- 
ion of  artists  about  their  art  carries  a  certain  weight  in  France.  For 
these  dissenting  artists  are  also  prominent.     They  may  not    have 


5i8  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

any  more  medals  Id  tlieir  credit,  but  tlie  French  medals  are  apt  to 
be  a  trifle  larger,  likewise  the  red  rosettes,  and  occasionally  the 
wearers  of  them  are  members  of  the  Institute,  which  is  very  dis- 
tino"uished.  In  the  sanie  way  the  critics,  in  addition  to  the  Figaro 
or  the  Temps,  write  for  the  Gazette  des  Beaux  Arts  or  the  Revue  des 
Deux  Mondes,  which  is  also  distinguished,  and  one  or  two  are  mem- 
bers of  the  Academy,  which  is  most  distinguished  of  all.  For  some 
reason  the  portraits  just  described  have  the  power  to  set  on  edge  the 
teeth  and  rasp  the  nerves  of  this  groujx  Mostly  they  are  silent  or 
coldly  civil,  but  at  times  they  break  out  into  savageries  of  speech 
which  pass  all  decorum.  The  work  maddens  them.  They  declare 
that  it  is  meretricious  in  the  most  offensive  sense  of  the  word,  that 
there  is  no  feeling  for  noble  form  or  color,  no  true  rendering  of  char- 
acter, no  beauty  of  craftsmanship,  but  instead  a  slippery,  superficial 
execution  made  up  of  a  lot  of  tricks,  an  insistence  on  every  trivial 
and  vulgar  detail,  and  an  utter  failure  to  see  the  things  wortli  seeing. 

And  in  so  saying  the  critics  are  right.  They  should  not  lose  their 
tempers,  but  those  who  struggle  for  the  higher  qualities  in  their 
art  are  naturally  exasperated  at  work  which  shows  no  consciousness 
of  the  existence  of  such  qualities,  and  it  does  not  diminish  the  exas- 
peration to  see  this  trivial  work  gaining  enormous  pecuniary 
rewards.  They  are  even  ajDt  to  ignore  the  possession  in  a  high 
degree  by  the  objects  of  their  scorn  of  other  qualities  not  indeed 
of  the  first  rank,  but  still  laudable  although  appealing  to  a  popular 
and  uncultured  taste,  and  they  take  no  account  whatever  of  such 
immensely  important  practical  factors  as  promptness  in  finishing  the 
work,  skill  in  fitting  the  picture  to  its  surroundings,  and  the  social 
qualities  of  the  artists. 

The  foreign  invasion,  however,  although  it  has  seemed  to  bear 
heavily  on  the  native  artists,  is  not  likely  to  prove  in  the  loiig  run 
an  injurious  influence  in  portraiture  any  more  than  in  otlier  branches 
of  art.  It  is  doubtful  even  whether  it  has  diverted  many  commis- 
sions from  the  native-born.  Those  who  patronized  the  visiting 
artists  wanted  Parisian  ])ortraits  just  as  others  wanted  pictures  by 
Toulmouche  or  Baugniet,  and  if  they  could  not  get  them  they  went 
without  instead  of  taking  an  American  substitute.  As  in  the  case 
of  \\\Q.  genre  painters,  the  preference  was  not  inexcusable.     Some  of 


FIG.  114.  — MISS   BEAUX:  CHILDREN   OF   R.  W.  GILDER,  ESQ 


THE   MODERN    PORTRAIT   PAINTERS 


521 


the  foreign  portraitists  were  artists  of  great  merit,  and  (though  there 
has  since  been  an  independent  influx  of  all  degrees  of  capacity  and 
incapacity)  all  those  brought  over  by  the  dealers  knew  their  trade 
thoroughly.  The  })atron  who  engaged  their  services  was  reasonably 
sure  to  receive  promptly  after  a  limited  number  of  sittings  a  picture 
such  as  he  expected,  with  approximately  the  same  qualities  as  the 
sample  which  had  been  shown  him  and  which  had  influenced  him 
to  give  his  order. 

With  the  Americans  it  was  different.  The  general  characteristics 
of  the  older  and  the  younger  men  have  been  described,  and  the 
qualities  of  the  latter  were  such  that  a  score  of  years  ago  the  con- 
scientious person  who  was  asked  for  advice  about  the  choice  of 
a  portrait  painter  might  indeed  recommend  home  talent,  but  he 
was  yet  obliged  to  make  certain  reservations  lest  he  should  later 
be  called  to  account.  One  man  would  do  work  not  surpassed 
anywhere,  but  there  w^ould  probably  be  interminable  sittings  which 
might  continue  for  a  year  or  even  two ;  another  would  be  sure  to 
do  a  brilliant  piece  of  painting,  but  the  resemblance  might  or  might 
not  be  satisfactory ;  still  another  might  introduce  some  eccentricity 
of  details  or  of  posture  which  would  offend  the  owner  or  his  family ; 
and  the  other  men  whose  work  was  dependable  were  growing  old 
and  their  recent  productions  were  not  equal  to  their  earlier  and  also 
often  not  up  to  the  newer  standards. 

Portraiture  was,  in  fact,  in  a  much  worse  condition  than  land- 
scape or  ideal  figure  painting.  The  rigid  discipline  in  drawing 
from  the  model  which  most  of  the  new  men  had  undergone  in  the 
Parisian  schools,  and  which  was  such  an  admirable  foundation  in 
the  other  branches,  would  seem  to  be  peculiarly  fitted  to  form  the 
portrait  painter,  but,  reasoning  from  results,  it  is  doubtful  if  it  was 
so.  At  all  events,  when  we  consider  how  few  men  comparatively 
were  trained  outside  of  the  ateliers  of  the  Ecole  des  Beaux  Arts 
and  kindred  schools  like  Julien's  or  Colarossi's,  and  yet  how  many 
of  our  good  portrait  painters  are  among  these  outsiders,  the  con- 
viction is  strong  that  the  severer  training  was  not  the  best. 

The  students  of  Couture  rather  antedate  the  period  under 
consideration,  though  some  of  them  like  George  Butler  were  still 
doing  admirable  work;  but  from  the  atelier  of  Carolus-Duran,  who 


522  HISrORV   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

almost  alone  in  Paris  based  his  instruction  on  painting  rather  than 
drawing,  came,  besides  Sargent,  j.  Carroll  Beckwith,  Ir\ing  R. 
Wiles,  Frank  Fowler,  and  William  M.  j.  Rice.  W.  M.  Chase  was  of 
Munich  and  j.  W.  Alexander,  Frederic  P.  X^inton,  J.  R.  De  Camp, 
Julian  Story,  all  were  among  the  pupils  of  Duveneck  and  felt  (like 
Dannat,  also)  the  Munich  influence.  Wilton  Lockwood  formed  his 
style  under  La  Farge  before  going  to  Paris,  Benjamin  C.  Porter  was 
practically  self-taught,  and  the  same  may  be  said  of  Cecilia  Beaux. 

It  would  be  difficult  to  place  against  this  an  equal  list  of  American 
painters  distinctixely  portraitists  who  were  formed  by  the  stricter  train- 
ing  of  the  Fcole  des  Beaux  Arts  and  similar  academies.  Even  when 
these  achieved  success  it  is  felt  that  they  did  it  by  force  of  tempera- 
ment, and  that  their  training  often  hampered  them.  In  the  first  place, 
they  were  taught  no  method  of  painting.  All  formulas  and  recipes, 
preparing  of  grounds,  setting  of  palettes,  underpaintings,  overpaintings, 
and  glazings,  everything  that  came  under  the  head  of  la  cuisine  was 
neglected.  A  minutely  accurate  drawing  was  covered  with  color 
beginning  at  the  head  and  ending  at  the  feet,  each  spot  being  finished 
as  completely  as  possible  before  another  was  begun.  This  was  not 
supplemented  by  copying  the  old  masters  or  by  much  other  study 
except  some  anatomy  and  perspective.  The  student  produced  a 
series,  partly  of  life-size  heads,  but  mostly  of  small  full-length  figures, 
from  weary,  ungainly,  nude  models,  admirable  in  construction  and  in 
truthful  rendering  of  the  uninspiring  originals.  There  was  rarely 
beauty  of  form  or  color,  of  workmanship  or  inspiration  ;  but  the  dis- 
cipline and  the  knowledge  thus  gained  were  invaluable  when  the 
student  turned  to  express  himself  in  new  channels.  Then  it  re- 
mained as  a  foundation  on  which  he  built  his  new  workmanship 
and  his  new  ideas.  ]')ut  jiortraiture  was  so  like  the  school  work  that 
it  w^as  difficult  to  avoid  its  defects. 

The  very  restriction  in  portrait  painting  to  so  simple  a  subject 
demands  that  every  resource  of  composition  and  handling  and  texture 
should  be  employed  to  add  interest,  otherwise  it  remains  a  school 
study  and  h()i)elessly  uninteresting,  h^n-thermore,  the  circumstances 
under  which  the  artist  works  demand  that  he  should  do  so  as  freely 
and  easily  as  ])()ssible.  Carolus-I  )uran  and  Duveneck,  like  West 
and  later   Couture,  tauoht  each  a  metliod  1)\'  which   the  canvas  was 


FIG 


;.  „5._LOCK\VOOD:  PORTRAIT   OF  JOHN   LA   FAROE. 


THE    MODERN    PORTRAIT    PAINTERS  525 

promptly  covered  with  color  and  then  brought  forward  as  a  whole 
by  regular,  well-defined  steps,  and  which  gave  their  students  as  soon 
as  possible  familiarity  with  the  brush,  the  instrument  they  were  to 
use  rather  than  the  charcoal  point  or  the  crayon.  They  worked 
freely  and  easily,  even  if  sometimes  inaccurately.  The  students  of 
Gerome  or  Lefebvre,  on  the  contrar}^  had  too  deep  a  conscience  for 
drawing  as  the  probity  of  art  to  slight  it  even  for  an  instant.  As 
has  been  seen,  it  served  them  far  better  than  the  Munich  facility  in 
other  branches  of  art,  but  in  portraiture  before  their  sitters  it  seems 
to  have  paralyzed  them.  They  felt  more  deeply  than  the  others  all 
the  delicacies  of  modelling,  but  they  had  no  facile  methods  of  ren- 
dering them ;  a  fleeting  expression  was  not  to  be  hastily  caught, 
but  rather  the  bored  look  of  the  sitter;  even  the  clothes  could  not 
be  slighted  or  be  hastily  done,  but  required  the  same  deliberate 
thoroughness. 

The  consequence  was  much  tedium  for  the  sitters  and  much 
wofully  prosaic  work.  Even  when  the  work  was  admirable,  as  in 
the  case  of  Alfred  Q.  Collins  or  Thomas  Eakins,  the  lack  of  painter- 
like training  told  terribly.  Collins,  at  his  best,  has  the  insight  into 
character,  the  simplicity  and  the  completeness  of  the  old  Dutch  mas- 
ters that  he  admired.  He  saw  with  splendid  unity  and  thoroughness, 
but  he  had  learned  no  facile  method  for  putting  down  wdiat  he  saw 
and  had  to  invent  one  for  himself, — laborious,  variable,  wearying  the 
artist  by  the  constant  effort  and  consuming  much  time  before  com- 
pletion was  attained.  In  the  same  way,  Eakins  with  a  like  grasp  of 
the  personality  of  his  subjects,  and  an  even  greater  enjoyment  of  the 
picturesqueness  of  their  attitudes  and  apparel,  yet  fails  of  the  popular 
appreciation  that  he  merits  because  of  his  neglect  of  the  beauties 
and  graces  of  painting,  —  not  the  beauties  and  graces  of  his  sub- 
jects. No  one  would  wish  his  sitters  more  modishly  clad  or  more 
self-conscious.  Their  interest  lies  in  their  personality,  and  that  is 
excellently  given.  The  drawing  is  the  most  searching  and  delicate, 
the  figures  are  well  constructed  and  stand  with  notable  firmness  on 
their  feet,  and  every  line  of  face  and  raiment  has  character.  The 
artist  seems  to  say,  "  Here  is  the  man,  w^hat  more  do  you  want?" 
but  the  paint  is  apt  to  be  laid  on  inelegantly.  There  are  vast 
expanses  of  background  that  are  thin  or  dry  or  muddy  or  cold.     The 


526  HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

eye  longs  for  beauty  of  surface,  richness  of  Impasto,  or  transparent 
depths  of  shadow,  and  the  lack  is  the  more  felt  because  the  artist 
has  shown  that  wlien  he  will  he  is  quite  competent  to  give  them, 
but  thev  do  not  come  naturally.  C()in])are  his  work  with  that  of 
Beckwith  and  see  how  much  more  effective  was  the  training  given 
by  Carolus-Duran,  for  Beckwith  has  kept  the  quality  of  his  master's 
handling  better  than  almost  any  other  of  his  })upils.  It  does  not 
change  his  own  personality,  it  does  not  make  him  a  copyist,  but  it 
enables  him  to  say  what  he  has  to  say  easil\-  and  rather  sumptuously, 
with  hea\-y  impasto,  rich  shadows,  and  broad,  strong  handling.  In 
like  manner,  Vinton  and  De  Camp  by  adding  sureness  and  solidity 
to  the  Munich  brush  work  have  arrived  at  a  result  not  far  different 
in  workmanship. 

Another  representative  of  the  Munich  training  besides  the  two 
pioneers  of  the  school,  Duveneck  and  Chase,  already  spoken  of, 
is  John  W.  Alexander;  but  his  art  developed  in  a  peculiar  and 
personal  way  much  influenced  by  the  art  movements  of  Paris,  but 
standing  as  much  by  itself  there  as  in  Munich  or  New  York.  It  is 
interesting  as  introducing  certain  new  elements  into  art,  and  especially 
as  adapting  itself  to  certain  peculiarly  modern  conditions.  It  has 
fitted  itself  both  for  the  moderately  sized  rooms  of  a  private  house 
and  for  the  enormous  exhibitions,  where  thousands  of  canvases 
contend  for  the  attention  of  the  public. 

In  the  works  of  the  old  masters  each  has  its  general  effect  apart 
from  its  elaboration.  Their  greatest  merit  may  lie  in  that  general 
effect,  but  the  elaboration  is  rarely  omitted,  not  even  by  men  like 
Hals  or  Velasquez,  whom  we  think  of  as  working  most  broadly. 
They  did  it  with  splendid  ease  and  sureness  ;  but  a  figured  velvet 
doublet  that  counts  only  as  a  solid  black  mass  will  yet,  when  closely 
examined,  show  all  of  its  elaborate  pattern  accurately  rendered.  But 
to-day  the  question  naturally  arises,  Why  take  the  trouble  for  a  public 
which  never  does  closely  examine.'^  One  reason  is  that,  although 
not  understood,  the  elaboration  of  jxittern  or  modelling  yet  gives 
texture,  and  without  it  the  mass  would  look  flat  and  empty.  This 
drawback  Alexander  avoids  by  using  a  coarse  absorbent  canvas  and 
painting  with  a  turpentine  or  petroleum  medium,  so  that  the  rough, 
unglazed  surface  helps  to  avoid  monotony  and  heightens  the  interest 


FIG.   iio.-ruKlKK:  TOKTRAIT   OF   A   BOY. 


THE    MODERN   PORTRAIT   PAINTERS  529 

of  every  variation  of  brush  work.  Having  tlius  simplified  his  work, 
he  turns  all  his  effort  to  the  originality  and  completeness  of  the  first 
general  effect.  The  art  in  the  suppression  of  the  unessential  resem- 
bles poster  art.  Nothing  is  included  that  does  not  actually  interest. 
This  is  the  merit  of  an  unfinished  sketch,  but  the  peculiar  quality  of 
Alexander's  work  is  that  though  much  is  omitted  (even  the  hands 
are  apt  to  be  only  summarily  indicated),  yet  the  effect  is  of  complete- 
ness. The  mind  desires  no  more  for  the  comprehension  of  the  sub- 
ject, and  the  shadowy  tones  which  fill  the  vacant  spaces  both  please 
and  satisfy  the  eye.  This  stopping  as  soon  as  the  interest  stops  is 
characteristic  of  some  schools  of  Japanese  art,  and  the  coloring  fre- 
quently has  the  same  underlying  principle  as  the  Japanese  colored 
woodcuts.  Each  picture  represents  a  destinct  color  scheme  of  yel- 
low and  buff  and  black  or  of  rose  and  gray  and  green,  carefully 
balanced  within  itself  and  kept  very  simple  and  comprehensible. 
The  darks  also  are  at  times  spotted  in  a  way  that  suggest  the  Jap- 
anese notan,  and  the  lines  have  a  long  decorative  caligraphic  sweep 
like  those  of  Yeishi  or  Utamaro.  All  this  makes  a  decorative  canvas, 
a  canvas  that,  apart  from  its  meaning  as  a  picture,  increases  the 
beauty  of  a  wall  on  which  it  is  hung  whether  the  wall  be  of  the  new 
Salon  in  Paris  or  of  a  parlor  in  America.  And  with  this  decorative 
quality  the  canvas  remains  a  portrait.  The  interest  is  drawn  to  the 
personality  of  the  sitter,  and  the  characterization,  though  not  elabo- 
rate, is  direct  and  truthful. 

It  is  noticeable  that  Alexander,  whose  art  many  consider  as 
characteristically  French,  never  studied  in  Paris,  although  he  lived 
there  a  number  of  years  as  a  practising  artist ;  while  Lockwood,  who 
has  had  years  of  training  in  the  French  schools,  shows  a  subtle  har- 
mony of  coloring,  an  enveloping  atmosphere,  and  a  perception  of 
character  intimate  and  profound,  which  he  is  not  likely  to  have 
gained  there,  but  which  may  be  traced  closely  to  the  influence  of 
La  Farge.  In  other  cases,  too,  it  would  be  difficult  to  divine  the 
place  and  character  of  the  schooling  from  the  works  of  the 
artist.  Just  as  at  an  earlier  date  Charles  Loring  Elliott,  who  never 
went  abroad,  seems  to  show  more  than  most  of  his  contemporaries  the 
qualities  that  might  be  supposed  to  be  the  result  of  foreign  study,  so 
two  other  artists  who  picked  up  their  training  as  they  could  and 


530  HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

mostly  in  America,  liave  each  in  a  different  way  much  in  tlieir  work 
that  would  indicate  not  only  a  longer  foreign  schooling,  but  also 
more  favorable  opportunities  for  the  assimilation  of  foreign  feeling 
and  tradition. 

Benjamin  C.  Porter  has  distinctly  an  echo  of  the  French  eigh- 
teenth century,  the  poses,  the  arrangement  of  the  costumes  and  acces- 
sories, the  decorative  quality,  and  a  sort  of  air  of  the  figures  as  if  on 
parade,  all  recall  the  painters  of  the  court  of  Louis  XV.  His  can- 
vases have  even  the  warm,  mellow  tone  which  age,  rather  than  the 
painters,  has  given  to  their  prototypes  that  hang  in  the  Louvre  or  at 
\'ersailles,  but  here  he  stops.  The  sitters  that  he  paints  do  not  figure 
in  memoirs  like  those  of  the  Comte  de  Gramont.  They  are  Ameri- 
can ladies,  dignified,  well  bred,  opulent,  and  (in  spite  of  their  airs  and 
graces)  as  clearly  and  candidly  moral  as  the  sitters  of  Huntington. 

The  art  of  Miss  Beaux  is  the  antithesis  of  this.  It  is  modern  in 
every  way;  the  people  sit  in  their  ordinary  dresses  in  their  familiar 
surroundings  and  in  their  easiest,  least  conventional  poses.  It  is  not 
Latour  or  Tocque  that  is  suggested,  but  Sargent.  Yet  here  again 
it  is  only  adaptation  of  what  is  congenial  and  that  as  much  from 
the  general  practice  of  the  freer,  more  skilful  painters  in  Paris  as 
from  the  peculiarities  of  any  one  man.  Comparison  is  often  made 
between  the  two,  but  not  with  much  profit.  Miss  Beaux'  handling  is 
broad  and  strong,  the  color  flowing  free  and  pure  from  the  brush. 
with  many  of  those  felicities  that  seem  most  accidental  when  they  are 
the  hiorhest  art ;  but  neither  in  her  work  nor  in  that  of  anv  other 
artist  is  there  the  amazing  jugglery  of  Sargent  which  has  something 
aggressive  in  its  force  and  sureness,  nor  has  she  his  impersonal, 
vivid  insight  into  character.  She  is  in  svm})athv  with  her  sitters, 
and  they  are  likable  and  charming  and  enlist  the  affectioiis  of  the 
spectator  as  those  of  Sargent  rarely  do  after  they  get  beyond  the  age 
of  eight  or  ten. 

Besides  these  who  have  been  mentioned,  for  the  most  part  because 
they  are  representative  of  different  groups  or  tendencies,  there  are 
many  more  men  and  women  who  paint  good  portraits;  indeed,  a  list 
was  made  of  some  thirty  or  forty  names  all  seeming  to  call  for  special 
mention.  Each  of  these  has  individuality  and  so  would  require  in 
justice  a  rather  careful  analysis,  but  space  forbids  anything  more  than 


FIG,   117.  — WILES:   MRS.  AND    MISS   WILES. 


THE   MODERN    PORTRAIT   PAINTERS 


533 


certain  general  considerations.  One  is  that  during  this  period  there 
have  arisen  in  America  no  portrait  ])ainters  of  the  old  type  nor  any 
that  as  yet  approach  their  predecessors  in  proficiency  or  productive- 
ness. No  one  "  taxes  himself  to  six  sitters  a  day  "  or  counts  his  works 
by  the  hundreds  or  even  thousands.  Apart  from  the  lack  of  patron- 
age and  a  possibly  unsuitable  training,  a  portrait  demanded  much 
less  mental  effort  from  the  artist  fifty  years  ago.  Then  each  man 
arranged  his  picture  according  to  certain  definite  rules ;  he  set  his 
palette  in  a  fixed  way;  he  posed  his  models  in  the  same  light;  he 
put  in  the  same  background.  He  had,  as  it  were,  a  typical  portrait 
which  he  painted,  varying  the  drawing  and  in  a  less  degree  the  color 
to  suit  the  sitter,  but  seldom  going  far  from  the  type  except  on  great 
occasions.  This  the  Paris  student  of  the  seventies  or  eighties  could 
not  do,  not  only  from  lack  of  training  in  the  schools,  but  from  certain 
influences  outside  of  them. 

The  realm  of  art  was  being  widened,  knowledge  was  being 
increased.  Effects  of  outdoor  light  rarely  attempted  by  the  old 
masters  were  being  discovered  and  analyzed.  The  "  Portrait  of 
his  Grandfather,"  by  Bastien-Le  Page  aroused  the  emulation  of 
hundreds.  In  vain  the  old  professors  warned  that  "  genius  would 
really  be  too  cheap  if  you  could  get  it  by  painting  in  the  yard  "  ;  many 
youths  thought  to  obtain  it  at  that  very  moderate  price.  They 
painted  portraits  out  of  doors,  studying  with  enthusiasm  all  the 
delicate  and  novel  variations  of  tone,  they  refused  to  accept  the 
old  conventions  for  studio  shadows,  but  insisted  on  dissecting  them 
anew;  they  even  succeeded  in  seeing  in  their  studios  the  violet 
shadows  of  sunlight.  By  all  this  not  only  was  labor  greatly 
increased,  but  the  chief  interest  for  the  artist  was  diverted  from  the 
character  of  the  sitter  to  the  analysis  of  novel  tones  which,  however 
much  it  might  divert  the  advanced  group  of  critics  who  were  eager 
for  some  new  thing,  did  not  please  the  plain  man  who  desired  a 
portrait,  for  not  only  was  resemblance  to  the  sitter  frequently 
considered  a  negligible  detail,  but  the  gray  monotone  of  the  plciii- 
air  school  was  apt  to  make  the  pictures  show  to  disadvantage  in 
an  ordinary  room,  and  the  sad  sincerity  with  which  every  detail  was 
finished  from  nature  diverted  attention  from  the  head  and  often 
resulted   in  ungainly  compositions. 


534  HISTORY   OF    AMKRICAX    PAINTIXC; 

The  diver2:encv  of  view  between  the  artist  and  his  cHent 
was  thus  sharper  in  portrait  painting-  tlian  in  tlie  other  branches, 
one  desiring  to  produce  a  picture  and  caring  notliing  for  the 
likeness,  the  otlicr  wishing  a  likeness  and  naught  else.  It  conse- 
quently took  longer  than  in  landscape  or  figure  painting  before 
a  compromise  could  be  arranged.  It  has  been  made  at  length, 
and  even  the  comrades  of  Bastien  paint  portraits  that  are  appre- 
ciated and  enjoyed  both  by  the  painter  and  the  sitter.  The  later 
generation  has  a  less  difficult  task.  The  open-air  school  has 
run  its  course.  Its  main  principles  have  been  absorbed  into  the 
great  body  of  art  practice,  and  its  eccentricities  have  ceased  to 
interest  aspiring  students.  Some  of  the  errors  of  the  earlier  train- 
ing have  been  avoided,  painting  is  better  taught,  and  the  merit 
of  technical  methods  is  more  considered.  The  visiting  painters 
have  shown  the  necessity  of  skilled  work  without  fumbling  or 
hesitation,  and  the  public  is  beginning  to  consider  more  dispassion- 
ately the  relative  merits  of  native  and  foreign  work. 

The  last  five  or  ten  years  have  shown  a  great  advance  in  the 
quality  of  the  mass  of  American  portrait  painting.  There  is  no 
one  practising  in  the  country  who  holds  such  a  position  as  Stuart 
did  in  the  old  days  or  as,  for  instance,  is  held  in  London  by  Sargent, 
who  in  spite  of  his  occasional  visits  must  be  considered  an  expa- 
triate, but  the  place  stands  open  for  such  a  man  to-day  as  it  did 
not  twenty  years  ago.  If  Sargent  had  come  to  America  then,  with 
his  returning  fellow-students,  it  would  have  been  impossible  for  him 
with  all  his  talent  and  with  all  his  industry  to  have  attained  any- 
thing like  his  present  position.  It  seems  as  if  a  young  man  of 
equal  endowment  returning  now  and  working  steadily  here  might 
not  only  develoj)  his  art  to  its  highest  expression,  but  might  also 
find  that  with  advancing  years  he  had  gained  a  re])utation  and 
an  authority  in  matters  of  art  in  accord  with  his  abilities.  It  is 
the  recognition  JDy  the  public  which  fails  at  present  rather  than  the 
talents  of  the  artists,  and  in  that,  too,  there  have  been  recently  signs 
of  a  change  for  the  better.  ■  • 

With  the  other  branches  of  portraiture,  the  last  dozen  years 
or  so  has  also  seen  a  notable  revival  of  the  art  of  the  miniaturist 
so   important   in   the   early  days  of   the  Republic.     It  is  an  artistic 


U 


THE    MODERN    PORTRAIT   PAINTERS 


537 


revival,  too,  something  better  than  a  timid  stippling  of  photographic 
likenesses.  The  artists  put  into  their  work  the  same  qualities  of 
handling,  of  composition,  and  of  character  that  are  demanded  of 
workers  on  a  larger  scale.  The  best  is  very  good,  so  good,  indeed, 
that  it  has  withstood  the  competition  of  foreign  artists  far  better 
than  the  life-size  work.  There  is  an  organized  "  Society  of  Minia- 
ture Painters,"  and  the  number  of  skilled  practitioners  is  so  great 
that  it  must  suffice  to  present  illustrations  of  some  of  the  best  work 
without  entering  into  the  merits  and  characteristics  of  the  individ- 
ual artists. 


/ 


CHAPTER    XXVII 

RECENT    MURAL    DECORATIONS 

Recent  Development  of  .Mlrai.  Paintin'G.  —  Early  Efforts.  —  Rotunda  at  Wash- 
ington. —  Bru.midl  —  Leutze"s  "  Course  of  Empire."  —  John  La  Faroe.  —  Trinity 
Church. —  Other  Work.  —  William  M.  Hunt's  Decorations  in  Albany  State 
House.  —  Beginning  of  New  School  at  the  Chicago  Exposition.  — Boston  Public 
Library.  —  Sargent.  —  Abbey.  —  Whistler.  —  Great  Increase  of  Decorative 
Work  in  Private  and  Public  Buildings.  —  The  Congressional  Library.  —  Re- 
cent Work.  —  Prs  Satisfactory  Quality  as  Decoration.  —  Some  Limitations 
IN  its  Inspiration.  —  Aid  given  by  Some  Men  who  have  been  more  prominent 
as  Organizers  than  Executants 

While  portrait  painting  which  was  the  chief  occupation  of 
our  earlier  artists  has  lost  something  of  its  primary  importance, 
mural  painting  which  was  practically  unknown  to  them  has  had 
of  late  a  great  and  gratifying  development  so  that  it  may  fairly  be 
claimed  at  present  as  the  most  interesting  and  the  most  promising 
branch  of  our  art.  In  saying  that  it  was  unknown  to  our  earlier 
painters,  exceptioii  should,  of  course,  be  made  of  West,  who  under 
the  king's  patronage  adorned  the  walls  of  chapels,  churches,  and 
halls  with  many  square  rods  of  painted  canvas;  but  apart  from  the 
fact  that  West's  work  was  indifferently  decorative,  all  of  it,  done  for 
specific  places,  remained  in  England.  The  great  canvases  like  the 
"  Christ  Healing  the  Sick  "  and  the  "  Death  on  a  Pale  Horse  "  were 
painted  for  no  particular  place  and  usually,  like  similar  works  by 
his  pupils,  were   intended  for  itinerant  exhibition. 

The  first  opportunity  for  mural  decoration  in  America  was 
connected  with  the  Rotunda  of  the  Capitol  at  Washington,  and  we 
have  seen  what  jealousies  and  intrigues  were  stirred  up  by  the 
award  of  the  commissions  for  the  eight  panels.  Even  here,  however, 
there  is  no  mural  painting  properly  speaking.  The  eight  panels 
remain  eight  pictures  in  heavy  frames,  with  no  attempt  to  fit  them 
to  the  architecture  or  to  unite  them  in  a  decorative  whole.  It  could 
hardly  be  otherwise,  for  not  only  were  there  no  traditions  of  mural 
work  in  America,  but  both  in   England  and   France,  from  which  we 

53S 


BLASHFIKLD  :     DECOKAIIoN    FOR    HAI.TIMoRK   COURT    HOLSK 


CHAP 


Recfnt  T) 


:>  -'COLl^ 

ViLLIAM 

HOOL  AT  THl 

.  —  WfllSTLEK          

^' 

ic  Buildings.  —  The  Congi; 

—  Re- 

1 1  - 

,\  .1K1-. . -- 1  IS  .-lAii-i  icTORY  Quality  as  Decorat 

mi  FATIONS 

j\ 

i       iNsjMRATinv.  —  Ain    GIVEN   BY    SOME   MeN   WHO    HA 

PROMINENT 

A^ 

t  J  KG  AN'                                                 VNTS 

W'liiLE    portrait    painting    which    was  the   chief   occupation   of 
r.nr  artists    has   lost  something   of   its  primary  importance, 

mura.  painting  which  was  practically  unknown  to  them  has  had 
of  late  a  great  and  ■.-'-.I'c^/'v^^--  -i  ^ .  '  :.^v.  .r,-  .,-.  n-,^i  ;f  ni  >x-  f-nrly  be 
claimed  at  present  using 

branch  of  our  art.     J;  (i 

painters,  exception  should,  ot  course,  f  West,  who  under 

the  kings  |>atronage  ador  '^'    ' 

1  -  '  any  s<'  aavas;  out  apari  irora  the 

:  ''s  W.M..    >,...^  .M.M.x^.    ...,    vlecorative,  all  of  it,  done  for 

^^  .  remained  in  England.     The  great  canvases  like  the 

"Ch  \lins:  the  Sick"  and  the  "  Death  on  a  Pale  Horse"  were 

painted  tor  no  particular  place  and  usually,  like  -  vorks  by 

his  pup  intended  for  itinerant  exhibiti" 

The  'lity   for   mural    dtcorati( 

connect^'.  x  -tunda  of  the  Capitc'  at 

have  seen  iloiisies    and   intrigues   wc 

Award  of  thi,  ,  ms  for  the  eight  j  . 

'.here  is  no   mur.*!   painting:  properly  fpcik 
r.  main  eight  ;  y  frani 

to  the  architect 

h.trdly  be  othci  >.-....     ■^•■.^^    .w .    i,,.i.,  ,...   .,. 
work  in  -/VWf^^ic^tjU^^iiH  HR<>t^rhi/>Ff<(Kf;M(-)iiafi5fl<l>'J'Fi-ane«.>?if'fMttM9hich  we 


.^.    was 

id  we 

'  the 

ht  panels 

m 

'le. 

it  could 

.ons 

of  mural 

RECENT   MURAL   DECORATIOXS  539 

received  our  inspiration,  the  art  was  at  its  lowest  el^b,  being  either 
little  practised  or  with  its  fundamental  requirements  misunderstood. 
This  explains  why  the  real  decoration  of  the  Capitol  was  done  not 
by  native  artists  but  by  Constantino  Brumidi,  a  political  refugee 
who  came  to  this  country  from  Italy  in  1S55,  and  who  was  employed 
for  many  years  at  a  fixed  salary  of  ten  dollars  a  day  (with  occasional 
extra  allowances)  to  paint  mythological  allegories  in  the  dome  and 
along  the  friezes. 

Brumidi  was  a  decorative  painter.  Not  only  did  he  know  the 
technical  side  of  the  craft,  how  to  draw  and  paint  large  figures  in 
distemper  on  the  curved  plaster  surfaces,  but  he  was  the  inheritor  of 
the  great  Italian  traditions  which  started  with  Raphael  and  Cor- 
reggio,  and  were  harmonized  and  codified  by  the  later  eclectic 
schools.  He  knew  all  the  gods  and  goddesses  of  classical  antiquity, 
their  attributes  and  accessories,  their  floating,  formless  draperies,  the 
way  in  which  they  should  be  grouped  together,  the  scale  on  which 
they  should  be  drawn  to  fit  a  given  space,  the  architectural  details 
necessary  to  bind  the  whole  together,  and  when  to  paint  in  color 
and  when  to  give  variety  by  working  in  monotint.  While  thus 
certainly  a  decorative  painter,  Brumidi  was  with  equal  certainty  a 
very  bad  one.  Even  in  Italy  the  school  to  which  he  belonged  was 
worn  out  and  every  particle  of  life  and  inspiration  had  departed 
from  it.  Its  practitioners  put  together  the  old  materials  according 
to  the  old  formulas  with  no  feeling  but  with  some  skill.  Brumidi 
and  his  compatriots  who  were  associated  with  him,  Capellano, 
Causici,  Castigini,  and  the  rest,  lacked  even  this  skill,  being  according 
to  the  Italian  standard  but  indifferent  workmen,  and  yet  it  is  difficult 
to  see  what  better  could  have  been  done  at  the  time.  The  Art 
Commission  appointed  by  Buchanan  in  1859,  which  consisted  of 
H.  K.  Brown,  sculptor,  and  James  R.  Lambdin  and  Kensett,  painters, 
criticised  the  work  of  the  Italians  and  recommended  the  employ- 
ment of  native  talent.  But  native  artists  would  probably  have  done 
still  worse  if  they  had  been  able  to  work  at  all,  which  is  doubtful. 

The  "frescoing"  of  the  Italian  journeyman  painter  was  the  only 
style  of  mural  decoration  recognized  in  the  country  at  this  time,  and 
furnished  what  Goddesses  of  Liberty,  figures  of  Justice,  sporting 
cupids,  or  flowery  garlands  were  needed  for  public  buildings  or  for 


-^O  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

private  parlors.  One  native  school  of  decorators  there  was.  The  old 
painters  of  signs,  coaches,  and  transparencies  long  persisted,  and  the 
crowning  triumphs  of  their  skill,  the  Fifth  Avenue  stages  of  the 
sixties  and  seventies,  may  still  occasionally  be  seen  serving  as  hotel 
omnibuses  in  remote  rural  towns,  their  interiors  adorned  with  ideal 
landscapes  and  their  exteriors  gorgeous  with  golden  scrolls  enclosing 
the  "  Battle  of  the  Monitor  and  the  Merrimac  "  or  "  Dexter  lowering 
the  World's  Trotting  Record."  But  the  school  rarely  attempted 
mural  work  and  died  out  or  was  submerged  by  foreign  competition 
soon  after  their  most  glorious  effort. 

When  during  these  years  Congress  voted  money  for  a  work  of 
art  it  was  usually  for  a  picture  —  a  portrait  of  Washington  or  a  land- 
scape by  Bierstadt.  But  there  is  one  exception,  the  commission 
o-iven  to  Leutze  to  decorate  one  of  the  staircases  with  the  "  Course 
of  Empire,"  and  the  result  is  interesting.  Leutze  was  both  capable 
and  conscientious.  He  was  himself  a  part  of  the  German  art 
movement  of  the  time,  which  under  the  leadership  of  the  older 
Munich  school  had  turned  to  covering  the  walls  of  palaces,  churches, 
and  museums,  both  within  and  without,  with  allegorical  and  his- 
torical compositions.  He  made  a  special  trip  to  Germany  to  learn 
the  technique  and  another  to  the  Rocky  Mountains  to  be  sure  of 
the  scenery.  His  decoration  is  a  serious  piece  of  work,  carefully 
drawn  and  carefully  composed,  although  not  in  the  least  decora- 
tively.  It  is  practically  an  enlarged  Diisseldorf  easel  picture  with 
all  the  thoroughness  of  execution  and  commonplaceness  of  inspira- 
tion characteristic  of  the  school,  and  yet  it  compares  very  well  as 
work  with  Kaulbach's  enormous  compositions  in  the  stairway  hall 
of  the  Berlin  Museum.  It  would  be  more  effective  if  its  surround- 
ings were  better  fitted  to  it;  but,  in  spite  of  the  decorative  border 
which  the  artist  added  at  his  own  expense,  it  remains  a  patch  of 
color  surrounded  by  whitewashed  walls.  The  texture  of  the  surface 
is  particularly  pleasing  and  as  it  has  stood  now  for  some  forty  years 
without  appreciable  change,  the  technical  methods  employed  would 
seem  worthy  of  study  by  some  of  our  present  decorators. 

The  "  Course  of  Empire  "  had  no  successors  and  stands  quite 
alone  in  this  country  as  an  example  of  German  decorative  work. 
Like  other  painting,  decoration  from  this  time  on  developed  under 


RECENT   MURAL   DKCO RATIONS  54 1 

influences  that  had  their  origin  mostly  in  France.  The  leadership 
in  the  movement  belongs  clearly  to  John  La  Farge.  There  is  a 
decorative  quality  obvious  in  his  easel  pictures  and  in  his  illustra- 
tions, but  in  addition  to  this  he  had  early  made  tentative  essays  in 
decoration  on  a  larger  scale.  The  "  Saint  Paul  Preaching "  was 
originally  intended  for  the  church  of  the  Paulist  Fathers ;  he  had 
begun  a  "  Crucifixion  "  of  which  only  the  side  panels  were  com- 
pleted, there  had  been  work  done  in  private  houses,  so  that  he  was 
not  entirely  inexperienced  when  he  received  from  Richardson,  in 
1776,  the  commission  for  the  decoration  of  Trinity  Church,  Boston. 
The  painting  of  such  an  interior  so  as  to  make  of  it  an  artistic 
whole  was  an  undertaking  of  a  sort  absolutely  unknown  hitherto 
in  the  country.  The  artist  has  related  the  material  difficulties 
under  which  the  work  was  done,  the  unfinished  state  of  the  build- 
ing, the  haste  imposed  by  limitations  of  time,  the  lack  of  trained 
workmen,  the  unreliability  of  the  ordinary  pigments  furnished  by 
the  trade.  He  has  also  told  the  spirit  that  animated  him.  "  I  have 
always  been  impressed  by  one  great  quality  never  failing  in  the 
works  of  the  past  that  we  care  for.  It  may  be  bungling  like  some 
of  the  Romanesque,  for  instance,  or  it  may  be  extremely  refined,  like 
the  Greek;  but  it  is  never  like  our  usual  modern  work,  which 
suggests  machinery,  that  is  to  say,  the  absence  of  personality.  I 
knew  that  our  work  at  Trinity  would  have  to  be  faulty,  but  this 
much  I  w^as  able  to  accomplish,  that  almost  every  bit  of  it  would 
be  living,  would  be  impossible  to  duplicate." 

In  order  to  do  this  he  not  only  taught  to  the  more  intelligent 
of  the  ordinary  workmen  higher  ideals,  but  he  called  to  his  assistance 
a  number  of  the  younger  artists,  unskilled  in  such  work  but  able  to 
understand  his  view-point,  —  Francis  Lathrop,  F.  D.  Millet,  Saint 
Gaudens,  George  W.  Maynard,  S.  L.  Smith,  Edwin  G.  Champney, 
George  Rose,  nearly  all  of  whom  afterwards  did  important  indepen- 
dent work  of  their  own.  When  the  scaffolding  was  taken  down  and 
the  stained  glass  windows  were  put  in  place,  America  possessed  for 
the  first  time  a  complete  and  beautiful  piece  of  interior  decoration. 
The  figure  work,  the  borders  and  arabesques,  the  flat  tints  of  the 
walls,  all  united  into  a  harmony  enlivened  and  diversified,  but  with 
no  jarring  note.      Not  only  was   it   beautiful,    "  a  construction  in 


542 


HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 


colors  "  (to  use  the  artist's  own  phrase)  with  that  distinction  which 
only  resolute  avoidance  of  the  commonplace  in  each  minutest  detail 
can  o-ive,  but  it  was  also  emotional,  stirring  the  feelings  in  the  deep, 
va^'-ue  way  given  only  to  fine  color  and  fine  music. 

The  work  in  Trinity  Church  was  for  La  r""arge  the  beginning  of  a 
season  of  decorative  activity.  Among  the  first  commissions  were 
the  paintings  in  the  chancel  of  St.  Thomas  Church  in  New  York 
(recently  utterly  destroyed  by  fire  together  with  the  reredos  by 
Saint  Gaudens)  and  the  paintings  in  the  Church  of  the  Incarna- 
tion, and  there  was  also  the  color  decoration  of  the  interior  of 
churches,  —  the  Brick  Church  and  the  Paulist  Cliurch  in  New 
York  and  others  in  Newport  and  Portland,  Maine,  besides  the 
work  in  private  houses,  as  the  ceiling  with  its  inlaid  panels  done 
for  Cornelius  Vanderbilt  or  the  two  beautiful  lunettes  painted 
for  Wliitelaw  Reid.  The  same  year  with  these  last  he  painted  on 
the  chancel  wall  of  the  Church  of  the  Ascension  in  New  York 
"  The  Ascension  of  Christ,"  his  largest  figure  composition,  and 
up  to  that  time  his  most  important  work.  There  is  no  such  unity 
of  impression  as  at  Trinity ;  the  picture  does  not  as  there  fuse  into 
an  indivisible  unity  with  the  rest  of  the  church,  but  there  is  no 
jarring  dissonance,  and  its  separateness  gives  to  the  composition  a 
deserved  prominence.  It  is  a  noble  work,  and  it  would  be  difficult 
to  find  in  recent  times  one  that  possesses  more  fully  those  equalities 
that  we  admire  in  the  greatest  masters  of  the  past.  With  the 
"  Ascension  "  there  came  a  pause  in  La  Farge's  activity  as  a  decora- 
tive painter,  and  when  he  recommenced  the  conditions  had  some- 
what chanijed.  Before  describimr  those  conditions,  mention  must 
be  made  of  the  decorations  of  William  M.  Hunt,  who  (for  all  their 
differences  of  temperament)  did  work  more  in  harniony  in  style  and 
feeling  with  La  Large  than  any  of  the  later  men. 

It  was  within  two  years  of  the  time  that  La  h'arge  was  asked  by 
Richardson  to  decorate  Trinity  Church  that  Hunt  received  from 
Leopold  Eidlitz,  who  had  been  jointly  employed  with  Richardson 
to  complete  the  State  House  at  Albany,  the  commission  for  the 
Assembly  Chamber  of  that  building.  In  spite  of  its  crowning  his 
earlier  ambitions.  Hunt  hesitated  to  undertake  the  unaccustomed 
task,  but  urged  by  admiring  friends  he  finally  accepted.     As  in  the 


RECENT   MURAL    DECORATIONS  543 

case  of  Trinity  Church,  there  were  material  and  technical  difficulties, 
besides  the  artistic  ones.  The  time  was,  as  in  the  former  case,  absurdly 
short.  There  was  also  the  question  of  the  methods  to  be  employed, 
there  were  the  drawings  and  studies  to  be  made  and  the  scaffoldings 
to  be  erected,  so  that  while  the  \\hole  planning,  preparation,  and 
execution  of  the  work  took  some  six  months  the  actual  painting  of  the 
two  lunettes,  each  forty-five  by  fifteen  feet,  was  done  in  two  months, 
just  as  the  work  at  Trinity  was  undertaken  and  carried  through 
in   four. 

It  is  likely  that  the  limited  time  aided  rather  than  hindered  Hunt, 
for  he  was  of  the  ardent,  enthusiastic  temper  that  rises  to  its  fullest 
height  in  difficulties.  He  chose  two  subjects,  "  The  Flight  of  Night  " 
and  "  The  Discoverer,"  which  under  various  titles  had  long  occupied 
his  mind  and  on  which  he  had  already  worked  in  various  forms,  and 
he  painted  them  in  his  usual  way,  broadly,  directly,  careless  of  mi- 
nute detail,  and  also  of  the  construction  of  the  picture  which  was  an 
unfamiliar  task  for  him.  It  seemed  in  places  as  if  he  had  taken 
separate  studies  that  pleased  him  and  forced  them  together  arbitrarily. 
As  a  whole,  however,  the  pictures  were  very  successful.  They  fitted 
admirably  in  their  places,  the  figures  were  good  in  scale,  the  compo- 
sitions were  original  and  effective  both  in  line  and  spot,  and  the 
color,  ahvays  Hunt's  strong  point,  was  particularly  fine.  The  plung- 
ing horses  in  the  "  Flight  of  Night"  were  relieved  against  contrast- 
ing clouds,  and  the  backs  of  the  sea  nymphs  glowed  around  the  bark 
of  the  "  Discoverer " ;  but  they  did  not  and  could  not  harmonize 
with  the  rest  of  the  room.  The  Assembly  Chamber  had  an  enor- 
mous vaulted  roof  of  a  yellowish  sandstone,  across  which  there  had 
been  cut  bands  of  flat,  stencil-like  ornament,  the  bands  being  painted 
alternately  vermilion  and  ultramarine,  which,  with  the  color  of  the 
stone  and  the  other  fittings,  gave  a  tone  to  the  room  against  which 
the  paintings  seemed  to  protest. 

This,  however,  did  not  affect  their  merit.  It  was  a  time  of  art 
enthusiasm,  and  when  they  were  displayed  they  were  greatly  ad- 
mired. A  bill  was  passed  appropriating  $100,000  for  further  deco- 
rations, and  Hunt  was  filled  with  enthusiastic  ideas  for  them 
when  the  o-overnor  vetoed  the  bill.  Hunt's  death  followed  soon 
after,  and  within  a  few  years  the  vaulted  roof,  which  had  been  boasted 


544  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

of  as  the  greatest  of  its  kind  in  the  world,  showed  signs  of  weak- 
ness, and  had  to  be  taken  down  and  replaced  by  a  flat,  wooden 
ceiling,  which  started  from  below  the  bottom  of  Hunt's  pictures. 
Above  it  in  the  dark  still  remains  all  that  is  left  of  the  "  Discoverer" 
and  the  "  Flight  of  Night,"  for  they  were  painted  directly  on  the 
stone  and  could  not  be  removed. 

Hunt's  work  at  Albany  was  done  in  1S78,  at  the  time  when  the 
returning  "  younger  men"  were  beginning  to  make  their  presence 
most  actively  and  aggressively  felt  in  other  fields  of  painting;  but 
although  it  was  a  time  of  notable  development  in  interior  decoration, 
furniture,  and  all  forms  of  applied  art  in  which  they  had  their  share, 
the  newcomers  had  to  wait  over  a  dozen  years  before  they  had  a 
chance  to  show  what  they  were  capable  of  in  figure  decorations.  As 
the  Centennial  Exhibition  of  1876  had  turned  the  popular  attention 
y^  to  the  beauties  of  industrial  art,  so  the  Columbian  Exhibition  of  1893 
gave  an  opportunity  for  a  display  of  mural  painting.  The  manage- 
ment, wise  in  that  as  in  other  departments,  chose  the  best  available 
men,  regardless  of  local  or  personal  considerations.  F.  D.  Millet 
was  made  director  with  C.  Y.  Turner  as  assistant,  and  under  their 
influence  Weir,  Blashfield,  Shirlaw,  Reid,  Reinhart,  Beckwith,  Sim- 
mons, Cox,  Melchers,  IMcEwen,  and  Lawrence  Earle  were  chosen  to 
decorate  the  Manufactures  and  Liberal  Arts  Building,  The  remu- 
neration was  small,  but  the  men  seized  eagerly  the  chance  to  attempt 
a  branch  of  art  new  to  almost  all  of  them.  The  conditions  were  such 
that  the  painting  had  to  be  done  on  the  grounds.  The  sayings  and 
doings  of  the  group  of  enthusiastic  artists  were  written  up  and  illus- 
trated in  all  the  papers  and  magazines  throughout  the  land,  and 
when  their  work  was  finally  disclosed,  it  was  received  with  a  chorus 
of  praise.  Looked  at  dispassionately  across  the  intervening  lapse  of 
time  it  seems,  while  some  of  it  was  better  and  some  worse,  to  have 
been  as  a  whole  rather  bad.  The  men  were  inexperienced  but  the 
spaces  were  peculiarly  difficult  to  decorate ;  and  no  skill  could  have 
solved  the  problem  satisfactorily.  In  the  dazzling  whiteness  of  the 
huge  colonnade  that  stretched  for  thousands  and  thousands  of  feet 
about  the  building,  the  eight  little  domes  (they  were  in  reality  twenty 
odd  feet  across)  could  only  be  discovered  with  difiiculty  and  studied 
with  discomfort. 


^\ 


\ 


RECENT   MURAL    DECORATIONS  547 

Apart  from  this,  however,  the  four  colossal  figures,  which  each 
artist  placed  within  his  dome,  rarely  came  together  in  a  decorative 
harmony  of  line  and  color.  Blashfield  s  were  probably  the  best,  and 
he  alone  among  the  painters  of  domes  possessed  previous  ex- 
perience in  decorative  work.  Experience  told  also  in  Maynard's 
Pompeian  decoration  of  the  Agricultural  Building,  which  without 
having  the  novelty  of  that  of  some  of  his  confreres  was  probably  the 
most  effective  of  any  on  the  grounds.  For  the  work  was  not  con- 
fined to  any  one  building.  William  de  Leftwich  Dodge  had  a  huge 
composition  in  the  dome  of  the  Administration  Building,  Millet 
had  a  ceiling  in  the  New  York  Building,  and  the  work  of  Miss 
Cassatt  and  Mrs.  MacMonnies,  of  Miss  Lydia  Field  Emmet,  Mrs. 
Sewell,  Mrs.  L.  F.  Fuller,  and  Mrs.  Sherwood  in  the  Woman's 
Building,  while  the  difficulties  of  execution  may  not  have  been  so 
great,  certainly  averaged  as  good  as  that  of  the  men. 

All  of  this  mass  of  decoration  mercifully  vanished  with  that 
"  White  City "  which  contained  it,  but  it  had  served  its  purpose. 
It  had  aroused  the  interest  of  the  public  and  had  done  something 
toward  training  the  artists.  It  was  followed  by  some  private  orders, 
but  the  next  great  public  commission  went  to  men  none  of  whom 
was  represented  at  Chicago.  Boston  had  just  finished  a  very 
beautiful  building  for  its  Public  Library,  and  private  liberality 
offered  a  very  considerable  sum  for  its  adornment.  It  was  not 
a  case  for  giving  opportunities  to  untried  men.  The  first  com- 
mission went  to  Puvis  de  Chavannes,  not  only  the  first  of  European 
mural  painters,  but  standing  quite  alone,  wdth  no  rival  of  even 
approximately  equal  merit.  In  the  other  commissions,  however, 
courage  as  well  as  discretion  was  shown,  for  they  went  to  Abbey, 
Sargent,  and  Whistler,  artists  of  the  highest  reputation,  to  be  sure, 
but  with  little  or  no  experience  in  decoration. 

The  work  of  Puvis  was  done  under  rather  unfavorable  circum- 
stances. For  the  first  time  he  prepared  decorations  for  a  building 
that  he  had  not  seen.  The  panels  were  small,  the  main  decoration 
placed  behind  a  row  of  arches,  and  the  walls  were  of  a  highly  pol- 
ished yellow  marble,  but  in  spite  of  these  hindrances  the  work  is 
worthy  of  his  great  reputation.  It  is  not  American  painting,  but 
it  is  noted  here  because  the  stairway  hall  that  contains  it  is  per- 


54S  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

haps  the  second  example  of  complete,  harmonious,  and  noble  interior 
decoration  in  the  country,  as  Trinity  Church  on  the  other  side  of 
Copley  Square  had  been  the  first,  —  the  clear,  classic  tranquillity 
of  the  one  contrasting  finely  with  the  deeper,  more  emotional  quality 
of  the  other. 

It  was  not  to  be  expected  that  a  portrait  painter,  entirely 
unversed  in  decorative  work,  who  had  never  represented  anything 
not  actually  seen,  and  who  was  so  bound  to  reality  that  he  would 
not  even  alter  the  jarring  tint  of  a  necktie  "out  of  liis  head,"  but 
required  an  actual  change  of  the  ofTending  piece  of  apparel  —  it  was 
not  to  be  expected  that  such  a  man  should  at  all  equal  the  work 
of  the  most  renowned  decorative  painter  of  the  time ;  but  all  who 
were  interested  in  art  were  enormously  curious  to  see  what  Sargent 
with  his  amazing  skill  would  make  of  his  task.  The  statement  that 
the  work  was  to  illustrate  in  some  way  the  theological  side  of  the 
library  made  conjecture  no  clearer,  and  when  finally  the  decoration 
for  the  north  end  of  the  gallery  was  completed  and  shown  in  the 
Royal  Academy,  the  British  critics  knew  not  what  to  make  of  it. 
It  was  too  important  to  be  ignored,  and  they  described  its  size  and 
shape,  they  explained  at  length  the  names  and  characters  of  the 
different  figures;  but  of  its  artistic  qualities,  whether  it  was  good 
or  bad,  hardly  one  ventured  to  express  an  opinion.  Their  reticence 
was  natural,  for  the  work  was  of  a  character  to  confound  all  pre- 
conceived notions  of  what  it  was  likely  to  be.  The  brilliant  painter 
of  incisively  personal  portraits  had  produced  a  great  imaginative 
composition  filled  w^ith  ideal  figures,  not  the  old  classical  gods  and 
allegories,  but  strange,  mysterious  beings  from  obscure  mythologies, 
typifying  cruelty,  hatred,  and  lust,  and  all  the  formless  horrors  and 
superstitions  of  the  early  ages;  and  amid  these  inextricably  inter- 
w^oven  and  incomprehensible  terrors,  a  subject  race  crushed  beneath 
the  yoke  of  the  PZgyptian  and  Assyrian  cried  to  a  great,  unknown 
God,  whose  mighty  hand  stayed  the  arms  of  the  oppressors,  while 
beneath,  a  frieze  of  very  human  prophets  denounced,  mourned,  or 
looked  for  the  coming  of  a  brighter  day. 

The  intellectual  element,  the  "  invention,"  to  use  the  old  term, 
was  as  great  as  it  was  unexpected  ;  the  artistic  quality  was  almost 
an  equal  surprise,  for  it  was  likewise  of  the  greatest  originality,  and 


RECENT  MURAL  DECORATIONS  549 

of  a  sort  not  displayed  previously  in  the  painter's  work.  The 
crimson,  dull  greenish  black,  and  gold  made  a  harmony  of  color 
strange  but  beautiful,  the  raising  of  much  of  the  gilded  ornament 
gave  variety  of  surface,  while  the  strongly  colored  figure  of  Moses 
in  high  relief  bound  the  upper  composition  to  the  frieze,  whose 
whites  and  grays  united  with  the  light  wall   beneath. 

There  was  a  long  interval  between  the  completion  of  this  work 
and  its  successor.  During  the  time  the  public  had  learned  to 
appreciate  the  merits  of  the  first  decoration,  and  they  confidently 
expected  the  same  qualities  in  the  second,  only  more  brilliant,  more 
strange,  more  dazzling.  When  it  was  finally  in  place  it  was  found 
to  be  none  of  these  things.  The  colors  were  mostly  a  dull,  greenish 
blue  and  a  brickish  red,  and  for  composition  and  arrangement  the 
artist  had  frankly  gone  back  to  Byzantine  models.  After  the  first 
shock  of  surprise,  however,  the  conviction  began  to  gain  ground  that 
here  was  a  work  finer  even  than  the  first,  a  work  so  perfect  tech- 
nically that  it  might  serve  as  a  canon  almost  to  decorative  painters. 
All  of  the  problems  of  the  art,  proportion,  scale,  symmetry  without 
monotony,  are  solved  with  absolute  and  delicate  sureness.  The  dull, 
dead  color  keeps  the  wall  perfectly  flat,  the  modelled  and  gilded  orna- 
ments vary  the  surface,  the  borders,  the  figures,  the  raised  relief  of  the 
Crucifixion  hold  together  within  the  limiting  space  with  a  perfection 
of  balanced  relation  to  each  other ;  while  the  lower  limb  of  the  crucifix, 
breaking  through  the  intervening  moulding,  joins  the  upper  half  to 
the  lower  in  a  perfect  unity.  Furthermore  this  method  of  treatment 
is  felt  to  be  not  accidental  but  intentional,  typifying  the  compression  of 
freer,  vaguer,  and  more  human  faith  within  the  rigid  bonds  of  dogma. 

There  remains  to  be  decorated  a  long  panel  of  wall.  The  sub- 
ject chosen  is  said  to  be  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  the  most 
difiicult  of  all  if,  as  may  be  conjectured,  the  intention  is  to  con- 
trast the  simple  tenderness  of  the  Gospels  with  the  savagery  of 
the  Old  Testament  and  the  ariditv  of  the  later  theoloo^ians.  The 
unexpected  has  already  happened  twice  though,  and  we  may  con- 
fidently hope  the  artist  will  conclude  his  work  with  equal  success. 
If  in  that  case  a  suitable  decoration  should  be  added  to  bind  the 
separate  parts  together,  Boston  could  boast  of  still  a  third  interior 
not  easily  surpassed  in  beauty  and  interest  elsewhere. 


550  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

The  work  of  Abbey  in  Boston  is  hardly  less  remarkable  tech- 
nically than  Sargent's.  When  he  received  the  commission  he  was 
already  painting  pictures  and  had  even  done  a  small  decoration  in 
a  New  York  hotel ;  but  his  handling  was  still  inclined  to  be  minute, 
and  his  values  a  trifle  uncertain,  as  in  the  decoration  mentioned. 
Suddenly,  without  any  transitional  work  of  which  the  public  knew, 
he  displayed  the  paintings  for  the  Delivery  Room  of  the  library, 
canvas  after  canvas,  crowded  with  more  than  life-size  figures  painted 
in  the  broadest,  freest  manner.  There  was  something  of  Sargent  in 
it  and  doubtless  Abbey  learned  much  from  his  friend,  but  there  was 
more  of  his  own,  for  Sargent's  {portrait  technique  could  not  be 
transferred  to  imaginative  work.  The  easy,  flowing  brush  work  was 
a  pleasure  to  see,  and  besides  the  new  skill  of  the  painter,  all  the  old 
skill  of  the  illustrator  was  there.  The  grouping  of  the  figures,  the 
faces,  the  costumes  —  all  the  little  accessories  were  interesting  and 
beautiful.  The  labor  and  ingenuity  employed  in  creating  the  sur- 
roundings and  paraphernalia  of  a  mythic  age  were  incalculable  — 
the  beholder  entered  into  and  dwelt  in  the  strange  land  of  legend 
as  if  it  were  reality. 

When  the  canvases  were  finally  in  place,  however,  the  effect  was 
felt  to  be  not  so  entirely  and  completely  satisfying  as  that  of  the 
other  work  in  the  library.  The  Delivery  Room  was  dark,  with 
dark  ceiling  and  woodwork,  the  pictures  placed  in  a  frieze  about 
the  room  were  separated  only  by  flat  mouldings  a  few  inches  wide, 
so  that  the  li<>ht  ed^j^e  of  one  came  next  to  the  dark  edije  of 
another  with  disquieting  effect,  which  was  increased  by  the  fact 
that  the  pictures  were  not  i)ainted  flat  on  the  surface  of  the  can- 
vas like  a  tapestry,  but  had  atmosphere  and  depths  of  transparent 
shadow  as  pictures  should,  but  as  decorations,  as  a  rule,  should  not. 
The  color,  too,  in  the  faint  light  showed  strangely  blackish  and  dead 
in  spite  of  crimson  and  azure  and  gold,  in  marked  contrast  to  the 
jjrophL'ts  of  Sargent  on  the  floor  above,  who  fairly  glowed  in  their 
black  and  white  against  the  gray  background.  These  criticisms,  it 
must  be  remembered,  are  made  in  comparison  with  the  other  w^ork 
in  the  Boston  Library.  It  is  only  in  such  company  that  we  recall 
that  no  man  masters  all  the  resources  of  his  art  at  once.  There  is 
recent  work  of  Abbey's,  like  his  "  Trial  of  Queen  Catherine,"  that 


RECENT    MURAL   DECORATIONS  553 

though  not  painted  as  a  decoration  is  more  decorative  than  his 
Boston  series. 

The  fourth  commission  for  the  Library,  which  was  given  to 
Whistler  for  a  panel  in  the  Reading  Room,  was  not  completed,  if 
indeed  it  was  ever  seriously  undertaken.  At  the  time  that  it  was 
offered  the  artist  had  no  longer  the  enthusiasm  and  possibly  not  the 
physical  force  for  a  work  requiring  long-continued  application.  It  is 
regrettable,  for  there  is  little  work  by  Whistler  of  the  first  impor- 
tance on  public  exhibition  anywhere  in  the  country,  and  doubly 
regrettable  if  the  execution  of  the  commission  would  have  involved 
the  supervision  of  the  decoration  of  the  rest  of  the  room,  for 
Whistler  was  a  born  decorator  of  peculiarly  delicate  and  personal 
taste.  The  famous  "  Peacock  Room,"  however,  which  is  his  best- 
known  achievement  in  this  branch  of  art,  is  not  characteristic  of  his 
usual  work,  which  was,  on  the  contrary,  of  an  extreme  simplicity 
with  a  minimum  of  ornament,  depending  for  its  effect  on  refinements 
of  tint,  accent,  and  proportion. 

While  the  Boston  decorations  were  being  completed,  a  great 
enthusiasm  for  mural  painting  had  sprung  up  throughout  the 
whole  country.  The  amount  of  serious  artistic  work  which  has 
been  accomplished  in  the  last  ten  years  is  amazing.  Few  among 
the  artists  themselves  would  be  able  to  give  a  complete  list  even  of 
the  more  important  commissions.  Much  of  this  work  has  gone  into 
private  houses  and  clubs,  where  it  is  not  readily  accessible  to  the  pub- 
lic ;  much  into  hotels  and  banks  and  theatres,  and  much  into  public 
buildings  properly  so  called.  The  cost  of  modern  construction  has 
become  so  great,  interior  fittings  have  become  so  elaborate,  that  the 
price  of  mural  paintings  is  but  a  slight  item  in  the  grand  total,  and 
their  employment  is  at  times  an  economy  as  compared  with  the 
colored  marbles,  the  inlaid  wood,  or  the  gilded  bronze  that  would  be 
expected  in  their  place. 

One  of  the  earliest  of  the  commissions  was  for  the  decoration 
in  the  Criminal  Court  building  in  New  York,  offered  to  the  city 
by  the  Municipal  Art  Society  and  awarded  to  Simmons  after  an 
interesting  public  competition.  About  the  same  time,  Blum  be- 
gan his  two  great  compositions  for  the  Mendelssohn  Glee  Club, 
and  Cox,  Thayer,  Vedder,  and  La  Farge  were  asked  to  decorate  the 


554 


HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 


"new  Walker  Art  building  of  Bowdoin  College,  IMaine.  But  the 
building  which  brought  together  again  the  great  body  of  artists  in 
friendly  competition,  somewhat  as  at  Chicago,  was  the  new  Library 
of  Congress  at  Washington.  Here,  though,  the  conditions  were  not 
so  impossible  as  at  the  great  fair,  skill  had  become  greater  and  the 
work  was  to  be  permanent.  Most  of  the  ukmi  who  had  served  their 
apprenticeship  at  Chicago  reappeared,  but  many  more  were  added 
to  them, —  H,  O.  Walker,  Benson,  Alexander,  Reid,  Vedder,  Charles 
Sprague  Pearce,  Barse,  William  B.  Van  Ingen,  a  score  or  more  in 
all,  and  to  each  was  given  a  room,  a  gallery,  or  a  ceiling  wherein  to 
display  his  ability  in  accordance  with  the  general  comprehensive 
plan.  The  Library,  largely  owing  to  its  decoration,  was  a  great 
popular  and  artistic  success.  It  was  epoch-making  in  a  way,  for  it 
was  the  first  government  building  to  be  erected  in  the  country  where 
the  architect  had  planned  a  complete  artistic  adornment  as  an  in- 
tegral part  of  the  structure.  From  it  the  public  first  learned  what 
it  had  a  right  to  expect  in  costly  public  works,  and  also  that  com- 
petent professional  management  not  only  produced  better  results 
than  incompetent,  l^ut  that  it  was  cheaper  —  for  the  building  was 
finished  within  the  estimates  contrary  to  all  political  precedent. 

The  decoration  of  the  Library  was  a  success  —  even  the  most  cap- 
tious critics  admitted  that  —  but  it  was  not  without  defects.  If  in  the 
great  reading  room  all  of  the  details,  from  Blashfield's  dome  above 
down  to  the  pavement  below,  united  in  perfect  harmony,  the  same 
could  not  be  said  of  the  entrance  hall,  beautiful  and  effective  though 
it  was.  The  tone  of  the  marbles  was  cold  and  raw,  the  decorations 
were  spotty  and  on  the  ceilings  of  the  galleries  insufTficiently  connected 
by  intervening  arabesques.  In  the  lesser  rooms  and  corridors  also 
the  pictures  often  were  in  no  close  relation  with  their  surroundings. 
They  were,  however,  almost  invariably  good  in  themselves,  there 
was  very  little  inferior  work,  and  there  were  some  notable  successes, 
Benson  and  Alexander  made  their  first  appearance  as  mural  painters, 
as  did  also  Walker,  whose  decorations  were  charming  both  in  exe- 
cution and  sentiment,  breathing  the  very  sjiirit  of  the  lyric  poetry 
that  they  illustrated.  Simmons's  work  marked  a  great  advance  on 
anything  that  he  had  previously  done,  and  Vedder's  lunettes,  which 
in   spite  of  their  great   beauty  of  line  and  com[)osition   had  seemed 


RECENT  MURAL   DECORATIONS  555 

dull  and  almost  muddy  in  color  when  shown  by  themselves,  took 
their  place  as  part  of  the  architecture  of  the  building  more  perfectly 
perhaps  than  any  others. 

The  Library  of  Congress  exercised  an  enormous  educational 
influence,  though  it  took  a  few  years  for  it  to  become  effective. 
The  interval  was  filled  by  constantly  increasing  private  orders. 
When  the  Waldorf-Astoria  Hotel  was  enlarged,  the  architect  for 
the  decoration  of  the  great  ballroom  secured  the  services  of  Blash- 
field  and  of  Low  (who  had  already  done  under  most  difficult  conditions 
a  charming  ceiling  in  the  ladies'  parlor  of  the  older  building),  while 
to  Simmons  w^as  given  a  gallery  which  he  filled  with  figures  of  the 
months  and  seasons,  freer,  surer,  and  more  delightful  even  than  his 
work  in  Washington.  The  Hotel  Manhattan  ordered  an  important 
decoration  by  Turner;  Blashfield,  Vedder,  Mowbray,  Simmons, 
Low,  R.  V.  V.  Sewell,  were  repeatedly  called  upon  for  the  adorn- 
ment of  private  houses;  while  banks  and  insurance  companies  gave 
commissions  for  lunette  or  ceiling  decorations.  Soon  public  com- 
missions from  the  states  and  cities  were  added  to  these.  Boston, 
while  preserving  the  venerated  dome  and  Beacon  Street  front  of  her 
ancient  State  House,  enlarged  the  body  of  the  building  to  many 
times  its  original  size,  and  Simmons,  Walker,  and  Reid  were  given 
orders  for  mural  paintings  in  the  Rotunda  and  Hall.  The  architect 
of  the  new  Appellate  Courts  building  in  New  York,  under  the 
promptings  of  the  newly  formed  Society  of  Mural  Painters,  made 
the  interior  of  his  building  a  glowing  mass  of  color  and  gold. 
Baltimore  had  a  Court-house  with  peculiarly  successful  decorations 
by  Blashfield  and  Turner,  and  Harrisburg,  St.  Paul,  Des  Moines, 
all  had  new  State  Houses  that  are  even  now  receiving  their  crown- 
ing ornament  at  the  hands  of  the  painters.  It  is  impossible  to  give 
the  list  of  such  orders,  great  or  small,  which  have  continued  down 
to  the  present  time. 

It  would  be  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  this  movement  was  con- 
fined to  painting;  it  represents,  on  the  contrary,  a  simultaneous 
advance  in  all  the  allied  branches  of  the  fine  arts.  In  the  Court  of 
Honor  of  the  Chicago  Exposition,  the  soul  of  the  great  untravelled 
American  public  was  stirred  at  the  sight  of  a  beauty  undreamed 
of  before,  and  in  the  Congressional  Library  it  saw  something  of  that 


556  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

beauty  made  permanent  and  fitted  for  daily  use.  Those  who  beheld 
had  no  theories  of  art,  nor  did  they  care  much  for  professional  stand- 
ards; but  they  knew  what  they  liked,  and  when  increasing  wealth 
and  po]3ulation  made  new  public  buildings  necessar}',  they  took  the 
advice  of  the  men  whose  works  they  had  admired.  These  men  had 
that  general  agreement  of  opinion  that  comes  from  thorough  training 
along  the  same  lines,  and  so  professional  authority  was  in  a  way 
established.  It  was  the  architects  that  usually  directed  the  choice 
of  sculptors  and  painters  for  the  decorative  work,  and  they  did  it  as 
a  rule  with  excellent  discretion. 

While  the  recent  increase  of  knowledge  and  ability  in  the  three 
arts  has  thus  been  along  similar  lines,  it  may  be  fairly  claimed  that 
mural  painting  is,  more  than  the  rest,  of  native  development.  The 
great  exodus  of  architects  to  Paris  to  learn  their  trade  was  later  than 
that  of  the  painters,  and  tlie  traces  of  their  training  in  the  Ecole  des 
Beaux  .Arts  are  still  much  in  evidence;  many  of  the  decorativ^e  sculp- 
tors were  both  born  and  trained  abroad,  and  much  of  the  work  is 
not  clearly  distinguishable  from  that  done  iii  Europe;  but  with  the 
painters,  while  the  ])rinciples  of  their  art  were  learned  in  France, 
the  whole  adapting  of  it  to  decorative  purposes  was  done  to  fit  local 
conditions.  The  quantit}-  of  good  work  in  proj)ortion  to  our  wealth 
and  territory  is  still  small  as  com])ared  with  foreign  countries,  but 
its  quality  is  cause  for  satisfaction. 

It  is  unmannerly  to  boast,  and  yet  in  justice  it  should  be  pointed 
out  that  there  is  no  living  mural  painter  in  liurope  with  the  high 
inspiration  of  John  La  I\arge.  Justice  also  demands  the  admission 
that  there  is  no  other  in  America;  but  there  is  a  group  of  men  such 
as  Blashfield,  Simmons,  Vedder,  Cox,  and  four  or  fi\'e  others,  whose 
work  is  on  a  level  with  the  best  of  the  Old  World.  Like  the  easel 
painters,  they  produce  their  effect  by  simpler  means  and  with  less 
accumulated  knowledge  than  the  Europeans,  but  the  effect  does  not 
suffer  from  that.  The  decoration  of  the  Library  of  Congress  has 
been  admitted  to  be  unsatisfactory,  but  it  stands  comparison  with 
that  of  the  Llotel  de  Ville  in  Paris,  The  latter  is  much  the  more 
important  building,  and  there  was  much  more  work  put  into  it. 
The  body  of  P"rench  painters  who  were  called  in  to  adorn  its  halls 
and    salons    was    much   larger   than  the  corresponding    body  here, 


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RECENT   MURAL   DECORATIONS  559 

their  skill  was  greater,  their  styles  more  original  and  varied,  their 
knowledge  of  the  resources  of  their  art  more  complete.  And  yet 
the  result,  in  proportion  to  the  effort,  was  no  better.  Unity  and  dig- 
nity failed  as  often,  and  some  of  the  canvases  were  offensively  bad 
in  their  unfitness  for  their  places,  which  was  not  the  case  in  Wash- 
ington. In  the  Congressional  Library,  moreover,  American  decora- 
tion was  still  in  a  formative  state.  In  later  works,  like  the  St.  Paul 
State  House,  it  has  approached  far  nearer  completeness.  There  the 
whole  building  within  and  without  forms  a  harmonious  whole,  with 
its  hallways  glowing  with  colored  marbles,  its  Court  Room  decorated 
by  La  Farge,  and  its  Assembly  Chamber  with  decorations  by  Garnsey 
and  two  great  allegorical  compositions  by  Blashfield.  These  last, 
with  their  pure,  sweet  color,  their  delicate  drawing,  their  multiplicity 
of  detail,  united  with  perfect  clearness  of  general  composition,  their 
fulfilment  of  all  the  special  requirements  of  mural  painting,  —  scale, 
flatness,  carrying  power,  —  must  satisfy  the  most  exacting  critic  of 
technique. 

What  is  lacking  in  American  decorative  painting  generally  is 
not  skill.  Any  insufficiency  in  that  is  readily  detected  and  sure 
to  be  supplied ;  what  is  lacking  is  a  wider  inspiration  and  a  deeper 
emotion.  Few  men  except  La  Farge  have  attempted  to  decorate 
a  church.  Lathrop  did  some  painting  in  St.  Bartholomew's,  and 
many  have  designed  stained  glass  windows,  Reid  especially  having 
had  a  commission  for  all  the  windows  and  interior  coloring  of  a 
small  memorial  church,  but  there  has  been  almost  no  religious  figure 
painting.  This  is  mainly  because  the  Roman  Catholic  churches  are 
either  poor  or  prefer  to  spend  their  money  in  other  ways,  while  such 
decoration  is  not  in  accord  with  the  customs  of  the  other  denomina- 
tions ;  but  there  is  also  a  feeling  that  though  the  artists  might  pro- 
duce beautiful  decoration,  they  are  unlikely  to  enter  into  the  deeper 
spirit  of  the  place. 

The  younger  artists  no  longer  have  the  "deep  insight  into 
spiritual  things  "  that  Page  or  Inness  possessed.  They  are  of  their 
time,  with  its  cheerful  optimism,  its  absorption  in  material  affairs, 
and  its  desire  to  know  and  to  enjoy.  From  this  it  comes  that 
their  work  is  also  lacking  in  austerity,  where  austerity  would  be 
more    suitable    than    richness   or    grace.       The    judgment   of    the 


560  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    rAIXTIXG 

humbler  critics  from  the  East  Side  that  the  Appellate  Courts 
"looked  like  a  music  hall"  expressed  admiration,  but  not  exactly 
of  the  type  that  Appellate  Courts  should  produce.  The  spirit  of  our 
recent  decorations  has  suited  better  the  costly  private  houses,  the 
banqueting  halls,  the  ballrooms,  the  libraries,  and  the  like  than 
the  graver  judicial  or  legislative  rooms  where  the  minds  of  the 
occupants,  it  is  supposed,  are  absorbed  in  serious  thought  upon  the 
problems  before  them  and  averse  to  too  insistent  external  beauties. 
Simmons's  decoration  in  the  Criminal  Court  building  has  a  touch 
of  this  gravity,  and  there  is  something  of  it  in  the  works  of  Vedder 
and  Cox,  but  in  general  the  artists  seem  to  think  with  Filippo  Lippi 
that  "  if  you  get  simple  beauty  and  naught  else,  you  get  about  tlie 
best  thini^:  God  invented."  This  richness,  when  it  is  a  merit  as  well 
as  when  it  is  a  defect,  is  not  entirely  due  to  the  painters,  but  rather 
to  the  architects,  who  bring  together  all  manner  of  precious  marbles, 
gilding,  mosaics,  and  stained  glass,  so  that  the  canvases  have  to  be 
keyed  up  to  a  similar  degree  of  sumptuousness. 

A  chapter  on  American  mural  painting  should  not  close  without 
acknowledging  side  by  side  with  the  achievements  of  the  figure  paint- 
ers the  services  of  men  like  Maitland  Armstrong,  F'rederic  Crownin- 
shield,  and  Elmer  E.  Garnsey,  who,  fully  competent  to  do  figure 
work  themselves,  and  on  occasion  turning  to  it,  have  yet  devoted  the 
best  of  their  talent  to  the  more  modest  but  not  less  important  or 
difficult  work  of  harmonizing  the  coloring,  })lanning  the  arrange- 
ment, and  designing  the  borders,  arabesques,  and  all  the  infinite  sub- 
sidiary detail.  The  present  advance  of  artistic  decoration  is  largely 
owing  to  their  intelligence  and  good  counsel. 


CHAPTER   XXVIII 

CONCLUSION 

General  Characteristics  of  American  Painting.  —  Its  Sanity.  —  Its  Optimism. —  Its 
Preference  for  Artistic  Qualities.  —  Its  Future  not  to  be  Foreseen.  —  A 
Development  of  All  the  Arts  Probable 

The  review  in  these  concluding  chapters  of  the  present  condition 
of  the  different  branches  of  American  painting  is  of  necessity  tentative 
and  inconclusive.  The  final  standing  of  the  different  men  is  not  yet 
established,  the  real  tendency  of  the  different  artistic  movements 
cannot  yet  be  clearly  foreseen.  Some  general  characteristics  of  the 
whole  body  of  our  painting  are,  however,  sufficiently  clear.  One  is 
its  sanity,  its  wholesomeness.  Ten  years  and  more  ago  Dr.  Bode 
noted  that  "  American  artists  have  in  common  the  avoidance  of  any 
kind  of  excess,"  and  this  quality  has  increased  rather  than  diminished 
during  the  intervening  period.  Art  is  still  so  new  an  interest  with 
us  that  we  have  not  yet  had  time  to  weary  of  the  simple,  natural  things 
of  life,  and  so  be  forced  to  go  in  search  of  the  abnormal  and  eccentric 
in  order  to  stir  a  jaded  taste.  Moreover,  we  are  notably  free  from 
the  baleful  influence  of  the  "  Salon  picture,"  the  great  "  machine  " 
swollen  to  impracticable  dimensions  and  striving  to  attract  attention 
by  its  strangeness  or  violence.  From  this  follows  also  the  second 
characteristic  of  our  art,  its  cheerfulness,  its  optimism.  We  are 
sentimental.  We  feel  profoundly  the  tender  melancholy  of  the 
autumn  woods  or  the  twilight  sky;  but  we  do  not  like  pain  nor 
misery.  The  blood  and  terrors  of  certain  pictures  of  the  Paris 
Salons  are  as  adverse  to  our  tastes  as  the  pitiful  dying  children  and 
starving  paupers  of  the  Royal  Academy.  Our  annual  exhibitions 
tell  of  the  joy  and  beauty  of  life  with  hardly  a  discordant  note. 

Besides  this  it  is  observable  that  the  aim  of  the  great  majority  of 
our  painters  is  for  purely  artistic  qualities  rather  than  for  intellectual 
or  anecdotic  ones,  for  beauty  of  line  or  form  or  composition  or  tone 
2  o  561 


562  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

or  color.  There  seems  to  be  a  special  feeling  for  pure,  sweet 
color.  A  gallery  of  American  pictures  is  apt  to  have  an  unusual 
number  of  canvases  noticeable  for  their  excellence  in  this  respect, 
and  the  persistence  of  the  quality  for  nearly  half  a  century,  as  well  as 
its  generalitv,  suggests  that  it  results  to  some  extent  from  our  clear 
air  and  warm  sunlight,  and  may  become  a  })ermanent  characteristic 
of  the  school. 

The  present  condition  of  painting  in  the  country  is  thus,  on  the 
whole,  sound  and  satisfying.  What  its  future  is  to  be  is  uncertain,  and 
any  specific  prophesying  would  be  futile.  No  generation  has  ever 
foreseen  what  the  art  of  its  successor  was  to  be  like.  The  portrait 
painters,  trained  under  West,  had  no  premonition  that  there  was  to 
be  a  Hudson  River  school,  and  the  Hudson  River  school  denied  the 
existence  of  certain  later  influences  even  after  they  had  become 
accomplished  facts.  It  seems  probable,  however,  that  we  are  on  the 
eve  of  a  great  increase  of  artistic  appreciation  among  the  people. 
As  yet  the  nation  as  a  whole  is  profoundly  indifferent  to  such  mat- 
ters. If  Mrs.  Trollope  were  to  revisit  us,  she  would  find  an  enormous 
advance  in  the  "  Domestic  Manners  of  the  Americans,"  but  she 
could  still  write  with  some  truth  of  the  "  utter  ignorance  respecting 
pictures  to  be  found  among  persons  of  \\\q  first  staudiiig  in  society." 

Tliis  ignorance  and  indifference  is,  perhaps,  the  reason  why  the 
artists  are  permitted  to  paint  in  their  own  way.  The  very  few  people 
who  buy  original  oil  paintings  either  have  the  same  tastes  as  the  paint- 
ers or  follow  their  advice;  while  the  great  outside  multitude  makes 
no  attemj^t  to  impose  their  likes  or  dislikes.  It  is  not  to  be  sup- 
posed that  in  America,  any  more  than  elsewhere,  the  average  man 
will  ever  become  a  discriminating  art  critic;  but  it  is  to  be  hoped 
that  he  may  in  time  come  to  take  more  delight  in  beautiful  sur- 
roundings, in  painting  and  sculpture,  than  he  does  at  present,  while 
the  steady  increase  of  leisure,  of  wealth,  and  of  collections  of  works 
of  art  should  result  in  enlarging  the  body  of  cultured  people 
throughout  the  country,  in  making  their  outlook  wider  and  their 
judgments  surer,  so  that  any  forward  movement  should  not  f.iil  of 
friends  to  support  and  direct  it. 

A  movement  of  this  kind,  if  it  occurs,  cannot  be  confined  to 
painting  or  to  any  one  of  the   arts,  but   must  include  all,  both  the 


CONCLUSION  563 

fine  and  the  industrial.  It  seems  as  if  such  a  movement  on  a  ereat 
scale  were  just  beginning.  It  has  had  to  wait  for  more  pressing 
matters.  The  country  had  to  be  settled  and  developed,  roads  had 
to  be  laid  out  before  parks,  cities  had  to  be  built  before  they  could 
be  made  beautiful.  Progress  has  been  hampered,  also,  by  unwise 
legislation.  Whatever  the  merits  or  defects  of  the  protective  tariff 
in  other  matters,  it  is  assuredly  a  mistake  when  placed  on  works  of 
art.  No  history  of  American  painting  would  be  complete  without 
record  of  the  fact  that  even  in  the  days  when  the  importation  of  for- 
eign pictures  was  greatest,  and  the  sale  of  native  work  most  dif^cult, 
the  American  painters  not  only  asked  for  no  protection,  but  with 
practical  unanimity  expostulated  and  protested  both  in  print  and 
before  congressional  committees  against  taxing  the  materials  of 
education  and  culture.  To  American  painting  itself  there  was  not 
so  much  harm  done  after  all  by  the  tariff.  The  country  is  the 
poorer  by  many  masterpieces,  but  the  painters  mostly  studied  abroad 
and  did  not  need  them ;  nor  has  it  greatly  affected  the  rich  who 
have  got  what  they  wanted  anyway,  and  are  rather  proud  of  the 
huge  prices  paid ;  but  it  has  seriously  diminished  the  beauty  of  the 
surroundings  of  the  great  body  of  the  people.  The  carpets  on  their 
floors,  the  chairs  in  which  they  sit,  the  dishes  from  which  they  eat, 
and  the  ornaments  on  their  walls  are  all  uglier  than  they  should  be, 
because  the  models  which  would  have  instructed  both  the  people 
and  the  manufacturers  have  been  kept  out. 

The  magnitude  of  our  coming  art  development  may  be  greater 
than  we  think  and  may  assume  in  part  a  public  and  political  character. 
Already  there  is  a  rivalry  between  the  different  capitols  and  indus- 
trial centres,  the  inhabitants  of  each  boasting  themselves  citizens 
of  no  mean  city  and  vaunting  their  State  Houses,  Courts,  Carnegie 
Libraries,  or  Soldiers'  Monuments.  Our  natural  resources  and  our 
optimism  should  last  at  least  half  a  century  more,  and  if  we  are 
granted  peace  at  home  and  abroad  we  shall  have  before  the  end  of 
that  time  wealth  unparalleled  in  history.  If  our  civic  enthusiasm, 
now  largely  expressed  by  cheering  the  local  ball  nine,  should  take  the 
form  (as  there  are  some  indications  that  it  may)  of  a  struggle  for 
superiority  in  civic  improvement  and  adornment,  the  result  might 
surpass  the  hopes  of  the  most  sanguine.     We  have  now  artists  in 


564  HISTORY   OF   AMERICAN    PAINTIX(; 

every  branch  competent  to  direct  and  execute  sucli  works  with  con- 
stantly increasing  skill.  It  took  but  a  few  decades  to  give  to  Paris 
the  character  which  it  now  has  and,  with  tlic  exception  of  a  few  im- 
portant buildings,  most  of  the  city  wliich  the  tourist  admires  to-day 
is  less  than  half  a  century  old,  and  in  another  half-century  we  shall 
have  a  dozen  cities  able  to  la\-ish  greater  sums  than  the  Baron 
Haussman  had   at  his  disposal. 

If  so  splendid  a  future  should  come,  it  is  to  be  supposed  that 
painting  will  have  its  share  in  it,  botli  in  adorning  pul^lic  buildings 
and  gratifying  private  taste.  "  He  who  lives  shall  see."  One  thing 
alone  about  the  future  is  certain,  —  it  never  repeats  the  past.  The 
old,  limited,  isolated  art-life  whose  records  fill  the  greater  part  of  this 
volume  is  gone  forever. 


GENERAL    BIBLIOGRAPHY 


The  compilation  of  any  satisfactory  bibliography  of  the  history  of  American  painting  is  difficult. 
No  general  works  on  the  subject  exist,  though  there  are  some  excellent  collections  of  artist  biographies 
and  some  lives  of  individual  artists.  The  most  important  of  these  have  been  mentioned  in  the  text. 
As  a  rule,  however,  the  volumes  devoted  to  individual  painters,  unless  autobiographies,  have  the 
defects  common  to  all  lives  written  by  relatives  or  friends,  in  that  they  are  apt  to  be  vaguely  and 
indiscriminately  laudatory  rather  than  accurate,  while  they  suffer  from  the  special  defect  that  the 
writers  usually  have  no  critical  knowledge  of  painting. 

There  has  been  some  excellent  criticism,  but,  for  the  most  part,  it  has  been  of  isolated  artists  and 
has  concerned  itself  with  their  works  rather  than  their  lives,  and  has  made  no  attempt  to  deline  their 
place  in  the  general  development  of  art  in  the  country.  Such  criticism,  moreover,  has  been  published 
in  a  form  that  makes  it  available  only  with  difficulty.  It  hai  rarely  been  collected  in  book  form,  and 
must  be  sought  for  in  the  periodicals  in  which  it  has  appeared.  To  reproduce  an  endless  series  of 
references  from  "  Poole's  Index  of  Periodical  Literature  "  would  be  of  little  use.  Only  a  small  propor- 
tion of  the  articles  there  cited  have  value  for  the  historian,  the  most  of  them  being  mere  accompani- 
ments to  illustrations  or  repetition  of  facts  found  elsewhere.  A  few  only  of  the  more  important  have 
been  noted. 

A  much  more  valuable  storehouse  of  information  in  regard  to  the  recent  development  of  art 
would  be  the  columns  of  the  daily  press,  if  it  were  possible  to  sift  the  good  grain  from  the  chaff  and 
preserve  it  in  accessible  form.  The  criticisms  of  the  annual  exhibitions,  the  reviews  of  books,  the 
obituary  notices  of  the  painters  and  the  general  record  of  current  art  in  the  better  class  of  newspapers, 
contain  all  of  the  facts  necessary  to  the  historian,  but  the  ephemeral  character  of  the  record  makes  it 
almost  unavailable.  Of  living  painters  few  have  had  their  careers  recorded  with  fulness  and  accuracy, 
and  for  the  essential  facts  in  regard  to  their  training  and  achievements  recourse  has  been  had  to 
biographical  dictionaries  and  the  various  exhibition  catalogues. 

Clkment  and  Hutton.     Artists  of  the  Nineteenth  Century.     Boston,  1880. 
Dictionary  of  National  Biography.     Edited  by  Stephen  and  Lee.     London  and  New 

York,  1885-1900. 
Champlin  and  Perkins.     Cyclopedia  of  Painters  and  Paintings.     Charles  C.  Perkins, 

Critical  Editor.     New  York,  1887. 
Appleton's  Cyclopaedia  of  American  Biography.     New  York,  1887. 
The  National  Cyclopedia  of  American  Biography.     New  York,  1898. 
The  New  International  Encyclopedia.     New  York,  1 89 2-1 904. 

BIOGRAPHICAL   AND    DESCRIPTIVE   WORKS 

(^UNLAP,  William.  History  of  the  Rise  and  Progress  of  the  Arts  of  Design  in  the 
United  States.     New  York,  1834. 

CuMMiNGS,  Thomas  S.  Historical  Annals  of  the  National  Academy  of  Design.  Phila- 
delphia, 1865. 

Tuckerman,  Henry  T.     Book  of  the  Artists.     New  York,  1867. 

Sheldon,  George  W.     American  Painters.     London,  1879. 

565 


\ 


^ 


566  HISTORY    OF   AMf:RICAN    PAIXTIXG 

Cunningham,  Au-.\n.  The  Lives  of  the  Most  Eminent  IJritish  Painters  and  Sculptors, 
New  York,  1S32. 

Sandby,  William,  History  of  the  Royal  Academy  of  Arts  from  its  foundation  in  176S 
to  the  present  time,  with  biographical  notices  of  all  the  members.  London. 
1862. 

Lester,  C.  Edwards.  The  Artists  of  America,  a  series  of  biographical  sketches. 
New  York,  1846. 

Benjamin,  S.  G.  ^V.     Art  in  America.     New  York,  18S0. 

WiNSOR,  Justin  (Editor).     The  Memorial  History  of  Boston.      1880-18S1. 

French,  H.  W.     Art  and  Artists  of  Connecticut.     Boston,  1879. 

BowEN,  Cl-vrence  \Yinthrop,  History  of  the  Centennial  Celebration  of  the  Inaugura- 
tion of  George  Washington  as  First  President  of  the  United  States.     New 
York,  1892. 
Contains  many  reproductions  of  old  portraits.     The  attributions  of  some  of  the 
canvases  are  open  to  doubt. 

Hartmann,  K.  S.     A  History  of  American  Art.     Boston,  1902. 

Van  Rensselaer,  Mrs.  Schuyler.     Six  Portraits.     Boston,  1889. 
Includes  George  Fuller  and  Winslow  Homer. 

Brown,  Glenn.     History  of  the  United  States  Capitol.     Washington,  1902. 

Some  Artists  at  the  Fair  by  Francis  D.  Millet,  Will  H.  Low,  J,  A.  Mitchell,  W.  Ham- 
ilton Gibson,  F.  Hopkinson  Smith.     New  York,  1893. 

Fenellosa,  E.  F.     Mural  Paintings  in  the  Boston  Public  Library.     Boston,  1896. 

Caffin,  C.  H.  The  Architecture,  Sculpture,  and  Painting  in  the  New  Library  of 
Congress.  In  Handbook  of  the  New  Library  of  Congress  by  H.  Small. 
15oston,  1897. 

Caffin,  C.  H.     American  Masters  of  Painting.     New  York,  1902. 

King,  Pauline.     American  Mural  Painting.     Boston,  1902. 

This  is  a  good  resume  of  decorative  work  in  America  up  to    the  time  of   its 
publication  and  is  w-ell  illustrated. 

Wharton,  Anne  Hollin(;sworth.  Heirlooms  in  Miniatures  with  a  chapter  on  Minia- 
ture Painting,  by  Emily  Drayton  Taylor.  Bhiladeljihia  and  London,  1898. 
This  work  covers  a  much  wider  field  than  its  title  would  indicate  and  is  written 
with  an  unrivalled  knowledge  of  the  social  and  domestic  life  of  the  colonial 
and  revolutionary  period.  There  is  in  it  much  original  and  interesting  in- 
formation about  all  the  early  artists.  The  circumstances  of  West's  marriage 
are  given  there  for  the  first  time. 

Eari.e,  Alice  Morse.     Two  Centuries  of  Costume  in  America.     New  York  and  Lon- 
don, 1903. 
Interesting  from  the  numerous  illustrations  from  old  pictures,  several  of  which 
have  been  reproduced  in  this  volume. 

Smith,  F.  Hopkinson.     American  Illustrators.     New  York,  1892. 

Sheldon,  G.  W.     Recent  Ideals  of  American  Art. 

DowNFS,  W.  H.     Boston  Painters.     Atlantic  Monthly,  Vol.  62. 

Morris,  Hamil'ion  S.  Philadelphia's  Contributions  to  American  Art.  Century  Maga- 
zine, Vol.  47. 

Brownell,  W.  C.     The  Younger  American  Painters.     Scribner's  Magazine,  Vol.  20. 

Crolv,  II.     American  Artists  and  their  Public.     Architectural  Review,  Vol.  ro. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  567 

SPECIAL   BOOKS   AND   ARTICLES 

Knickerbocker  Magazine.     New  York. 

Bulletin  of  the  American  Art  Union.     New  York,  1845-1850. 

The  Crayon.     Stillman  and  Durand,  proprietors.     New  York,  1855-1860. 

American  Art  Review.     Boston,  1880- 1881. 

The  Studio.     New  York,  1883-1884. 

The  Art  Review.     New  York,  188  7- 1888. 

Allston,  Washington.     Life  and  Letters,  by  Jared  B.  Flagg,  N.A.,  S.T.D.     New  York, 

1892. 

Life  of,  by  M.  F.  Sweetser.     Cambridge,  1879. 

An  unpretentious  book  containing  much  information  about  Allston. 
West,  Benjamin,  Life,  Studies,  and  Works  of,  by  John  Gait.     London,  1820. 
Copley,  John  Singleton.     Domestic  and  Artistic  Life  of,  by  Martha  Babcock  Amory. 

Boston,  1882. 

Life  of,  by  A.  T.  Perkins.     Boston,  1873. 

Durand,  Asher  B.     Life  and  Times,  by  John  Durand.     New  York,  1894. 

Harding,  Chester.     A  Sketch  of  Chester  Harding,  Artist,  drawn  by  his  own  hand. 

Edited  by  his  daughter,  Margaret  E.  White.     Boston  and  New  York,  1890. 
Elliott,  Charles  L.     Article  in  Harper's  Magazine,  Vol.  38. 
Healey,  G.  p.  a.     Reminiscences  of  a  Portrait  Painter.     Chicago,  1894. 
Inness,  George.     A  Memorial  of  the  Student,  the  Artist,  and  the  Man,  by  Alfred 

Trumble.     New  York,  1895. 
Martin,  Homer.     A  Reminiscence.     New  York,  1 904. 

Not  primarily  an  account  of  his  art-life  or  works,  but  an  intimate  revelation  of  his 

character  as  a  man. 
Stuart,  Gilbert.     Life  and  Works  of,  by  George  C.  Mason.     New  York,  1894. 
Trumbull,  John.     Autobiography,  Reminiscences  and  Letters.     New  York,  1841. 
A  Brief  Sketch  of  his  Life,  to  which  is  added  a  Catalogue  of  his  Works,  by  John 

F.  Weir,  N.A.,  M.A.     New  York,  1901. 
Fulton,  Robert.     Life,  by  C.  D.  Golden.     New  York,  181 7. 
Morse,  S.  F.  B.     Life,  by  S.  Irenaeus  Prime.     New  York,  1S75. 
Leslie,  C.  R.     Autobiographical  Recollections.     Boston,  i860. 
Cole,  Thomas.     Life  and  Works,  by  Louis  L.  Noble.     New  York,  1853. 
Hunt,  William  M.     Art  Life  of,  by  Helen  M.  Knowlton.     Boston,  1899. 

Talks  on  Art.     First  and  Second  Series.     Boston. 

Fuller,  George,     Life  and  Works.     Boston,  1886* 

La  Faroe,  John.    Artist  and  Writer,  by  Cecilia  Waern.    Reprinted  from  The  Portfolio.       ^ 

London,  1896. 
Considerations  on  Painting.     Lectures  given  in  1893  at  the  Metropolitan  Museum. 

New  York,  1901.  ^ 

An  Artist's  Letters  from  Japan.     New  York,  1897. 

Vanderlyn,  John.     Article  in  Putnam's  Magazine,  Vol.  III. 

Article  by  Bishop  Kip.     Atlantic  Monthly,  February,  1867. 

Whistler,  James  A.  McNeill.     Monthly  Bulletin  of  Books  added  to  the  Public  Library 

of  Boston.     Boston,  1904.  V^ 
Notes  toward  a  Bibliography,  by  A.  E.  Gellatini.     New  York,  1900-1901. 


568  HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAINTING 

Whistler  has  probably  had  more  written  about  him  than  any  other  American 
artist.  The  existence  of  the  above  bibliographies  makes  citation  of  the  mass 
of  Whistler  literature  unnecessary.  As  a  rule,  writers  in  I-higlish  have  given 
too  much  attention  to  the  anecdotic  side  of  the  artist.  The  life  and  articles 
cited  below  suffice  to  give  a  clear  idea  of  the  influences  which  shaped  the 
artist's  character  and  work. 

Histoire  de   J.   McN.  Whistler  et  de  son  CEuvre  par  Theodore  Duret.     Paris, 

1904. 

Artistes  Contemporains,  by  Ldonce  Benedite,  in  Gazette  des  Beaux  Arts.     Ser.  3, 

Vol.  33  et  seq.     Paris,  1905. 


INDEX   OF   PAINTERS'   NAMES 


Abbey,  E.  A.,  418-427,  547  et 

seq. 
Achenbach,  A.,  209,  244. 
Achenbach,  O.,  209. 
Agate,  F.    S.,    191,    192,    199, 

200. 
Alexander.  Cosmo,  79,  97. 
Alexander,    Francis,  170-172, 

175,  179,  200,  213,  214,  275. 
Alexander,  Henry.  363. 
Alexander,   J.   W.,   522,    526, 

529.  554- 
Allen,  W.  S.,  453. 
Allston,  Washington,   23,  73, 

107-122   et  seq.,   213,    286, 

298.  315'  318. 
Alma-Tadema.  L..  419. 
Armstrong,  Maitland,  560. 

Bacher.  Otto,  363. 
Baker,  George  A.,  276,  277. 
Barry,  James,  60,  61. 
Barse,  G.  R.,  479,  554. 
Bastien-Le  Page,     374,      388, 

401,  ^10  et  seq.,  ^SA,  533- 
Battoni.  Pompeo,  no,  117. 
Baugniet,  C.,  361,  518. 
Beard.  William  H.,  349. 
Beaux,  Miss  Cecilia,  522,  531. 
Beckwith,  J.  C,  364,  368,  522, 

526,  544. 
Beest,  Albert  van,  269. 
Bell,  E.  A.,  476. 
Bellows,  A.  F.,  254. 
Belly,  Leon,  444. 
Bembridge.  Henrv, 


ry,    109,    151, 


15- 


Benson.  Eugene,  298,  304. 
Benson,  F.  W.,  472,  473,  554. 
Bicknell,  315. 
Bierstadt,    Albert,    232,    236, 

240,  245,  251-252,  261,  360, 

540. 


Blackburn,   Jonathan    B.,    18, 

23,  38. 
Blake.  William,  394,488. 
Blakelock,    R.    A.,    446,    447, 

476. 
Blashfield,  E.    H.,    544,    547, 

554-559- 
Blum,  Robert,  493,  496,  497, 

510.  553- 
Bogert,  George,  447. 
Bonnat,  Leon,  364.  387,  432. 
Botticelli,  Sandro,  487. 
Boucher,  Francois,  336,  353. 
Boughton,  George  H.,  345. 
Bouguereau,  W.  A.,  360,  364, 

412. 
Boulanger,  G..  364. 
Bradford,  William,    232,   252, 

269. 
Brevoort,  James  R.,  254. 
Bridgman,    F.    A.,   364,    368, 

408-410. 
Bristol,  John  B.,  232,  236,  240- 

243  et  seq. 
Brown,  F.  Madox,  390. 
Brown,  George  L.,  253. 
Brown,  J.  Appleton,  368,  454, 

458. 
Brown,  J.  G.,  343,  344,   500, 

501. 
Brown,  Mather,  124. 
Brumidi,  C,  539. 
Brush,  G.  de  F.,  368,  491.  492. 
Bunce,  W.  G.,  368,  387,  448, 

449. 
Burne-Jones,  Sir  Edward,  390. 
Burroughs,  Bryson,  483,  487. 
Butler,  George,  521. 
Butler,  H.  R„  395,  462. 

Cabanel,  Alexandre.  368,  501. 
Calame,  A.,  429. 
Campliausen,  W..  209. 

569 


Carlsen,  E.,  450. 
Carolus-Duran.  364,  389,  398, 
429.  430,  440,  521,  522,  526. 
Casilear,  John  W.,   232,    236, 

243- 
Cassatt,  Miss  Mary,  411,  412, 

547- 
Champlain,  Samuel  de,  7. 
Champney,  E.  G.,  541. 
Chapman,  C.  T.,  462. 
Chapman,  John  G.,  203,  243, 

290. 
Chase,  William  AL,  363.  368, 

383  et  seq.,  522,  526. 
Church,  F.  E.,  232,  236,  240, 

245,  248-254,  261,  360,  440. 
Church,  F.  S.,  471,  472. 
Churchill,  W.  W.,  475,  479. 
Clark,  142. 
Clark,  Walter,  461. 
Claypoole,  James,  64. 
Clays,  P.  J.,  387. 
Coffin,  W.  A.,  448,  449. 
Cogniet,  Leon.  296. 
Cole,  J.  Foxcroft.  315. 
Cole,  Thomas,  172,  193,  198, 

208.214, 2 1 8-249  t'/j-iJ^.,  291. 
Coleman,  C.  C,  298,  304. 
Collins,  A.  Q.,  525. 
Colman.    Samuel,    232,     268, 

269,  372,  388,  444. 
Constable,  John,  63,  229.  230, 

261,  461. 
Coomans,  Joseph,  292. 
Copley,  John  S.,  18-40,  59,  62, 

68,  69.  80.  85,  98,   102,  107, 
108.  113.  121.  129.  164,  334. 

Cornelius,  P.  von,  117. 

Corot,  J.  B.  C,  256-257,  261,. 

262.  266.  267,  308.  336,  360. 
369,  446,  454  et  seq. 

Correggio,  25.  208,  464,  539.. 
Cottet,  C,  417. 


570 


HISTORY    OF   AMI:RICAN    PAINTING 


Courbet,    Gustave.   333,    337. 

355,  401,  410.  432. 
Couse,  E.  Irving.  501. 
Couture,  Thomas,    281.   308- 

314  ^/  seq.,  317,    349,  363, 

368,  387.  521.  522. 
Cox.  Kenyon,  480,   544.    553, 

556.  560. 
Cox.  Mrs.  Kenyon.  480. 
Coyle,  James,  193. 
Crane.    R.    Bruce,    448,    449, 

458. 
Crome.  John.  448. 
Cropsey,  J.  F..  232,  236,  243. 

361,  362. 
Crowninshield,  Frederic.  560. 
Cummings.  T.    S..    191,    192, 

198,  200. 
Curran,  C.  C  479. 
Currier,  J.  Frank.  363.  378. 

Daingerfield,  E.,  480. 
Dannat.  W.  T.,  407.  522. 
Daubigny.  C.  F.,  266.  360.  364. 

450?  454- 
David.  J.  L.,  119,  133.  363. 
Davies.  A.  B..  483.  487. 
Davis.  C.  H..  450. 
Dearth,  Henry  G.,  447,  449. 
De  Camp,  J.  R.,  522,  526. 
Degas.  333.  336. 
De  Kay,  Miss  (Mrs.  Gilder), 

371,  372,  390- 
Delacroix,  F.  V.  E..  363,  483. 
Delanoy,  Jr.,  Abraham,  67,  y2>^ 

74- 
Delaroche.  Paul.  295. 
De  Luce,  Percival.  387. 
De  Neuville,  A.  M.,  503. 
Dessar,  L.  P.,  447. 
Detaille,  J.  B.  E..  503. 
Dewey,  C.  M.,  445,  446. 
Dewing,  T.  \V.,  364,  476,  479. 

483,  492. 
Diaz.   N.    v.,    362,    364,    387. 

445,  446,  447,  495- 
Dielman,  F.,  382. 
Dodge,  W.  de  L.,  547. 
Dolph,  J.  H.,  505. 
Donoho.  R.,  450. 
Doughty,  Thomas,    172,    213, 

214. 
Du  .Mond,  F.  V..  479. 


Dunlap.   William.   11.    17,  24. 

43.    44.    47.    49.    61,    72-79 

el  seq.,  i%6  ef  scq. 
Duprd,  Jules.  447.  495. 
Durand.  A.  B.,  191.  192,  198, 

208.  214-240  et  seq.,  291.' 
Duveneck.    F..    363,  368,  378 

et  seq..  407.  475.  522,  526. 

Eakins.    Thomas.     364,    368. 

504,  525. 
Earle,  Lawrence,  544. 
Earle,  Ralph,  76. 
Eaton,  C.  W..  461. 
Eaton.  Wvatt.  364.  368.  371, 

388. 
Edmunds,  John  W.,  206. 
Edwin,  David,  143. 
Eichelberger,  R.  A..  462. 
Elliott,    Charles    L.,    272-277 

et  seq.,  282,  529. 
Emmet,  Miss  Lydia  F.,  547. 
Evers,  John,  193. 

Fantin-Latour.     Henri,     333, 

334-  337.  33'^- 
Farrar.  Henry,  253. 
Farrar,  T.  C,  390. 
Feke.  Robert,  17. 
Ferguson,  Henry  A.,  440. 
Field,  Robert,  1 13. 
Fisher,  Alvan,   172,  213,  214, 

364- 
Fitz,  B.  R.,  363. 
Flagg,  George  B..  204.  208. 
Flagg.  Jared  B..  204. 
Flagg,  Montague,  368. 
Fortuny,  M.,  423,  493. 
Foster,  Ben,  458. 
Fowler,  Frank,  522. 
Fran^ais,  F.  L.,  267. 
Franzen,  August,  501. 
Eraser,     Charles,      109.      113, 

151. 
Frazier.  68. 

Frere,  Edouard,  343.  345. 
Fresnoy,  Charles  Alphonse  du, 

55- 
Fromentin.  E..  258. 
Fromuth.  C.  H.,  417. 
Fuller,  (^.eorge,  390-394,  444, 

446,  475. 
Fuller,  Mrs.  L.  F.,  547. 


Fulton,  Robert,  75. 

Fuseli,  Henry,  53,  61,  no,  247. 

Gainsborough.  Thomas.  57-58, 

62,  86,  171,  394.  438.  476. 
Galagher,  142. 
Garnsey,  E.  E.,  559-560. 
Gaul,  Gilbert,  368.  503. 
Gay,  Walter,  404. 
Gay.  Winckworth  A..  307.  308. 
Gc'rard,  Baron,  119. 
Gcromc.  J.  L..  360.  364.  388. 

389.  410.  492.  525. 
Gibson.  C.  D.,  471. 
Gifford.  R.    Swain.  232,  239, 

254.  269,  372,  388. 
Gifford,  Sandford  R.,  232,  236, 

245-244  et  seq.,  269,  388. 
Gignoux.  Regis,  255. 
Giorgione,  322,  340,  424,  488. 
Glackens,  W.  J.,  509. 
Gleyre.    M.  C.    G.,    329,  336, 

337,  346,  349- 

Gravelot,  44. 

Gray,  Henry  Peters,  289,  290, 
297. 

Green,  F.  R.,  461. 

Green,  Miss  Elizabeth  Ship- 
pen.  510. 

Greenwood,  John,  17. 

Gros,  Baron,  281. 

Guy,  S.  J.,  343.  344,  50l- 

Hale,  Philip  C,  475. 
Hall,  Miss,  181. 
Hals,  Franz,  432,  526. 
Hamilton,  J.  Mc,  428. 
Harding,     Chester,     165-170, 

172,  179,  181,  200,  204,  215, 

271,  275,  276,  343,  364. 
Harrison,  Alexander,  404,  410, 

411,  418. 
Harrison.  Birge.  448.  449. 
Hart.  James  McD.,  254,  262, 

268. 
Hart,  William.  254. 
Hasenclever.  J.  P.,  209,  251. 
Hassam.  Childe.  389,  453. 
Haydon,     Benjamin     Robert, 

61,  62. 
Hays,  William.  349. 
Healey,  G.  P.  A.,  277-282  et 

seq. 


INDEX 


571 


Henri,  Robert.  506. 
Henry,  E.  L.,  346. 
Herter,  Albert,  483,  484. 
Herter,  Mrs.  Albert,  484. 
Hesselius,  68. 
Hitchcock,  George,  408. 
Hogarth,  William,  14.  52,  57. 
Holbein,  Hans,  57,  408,  432, 

491,  492. 
Homer,     Winslow.     350-358, 

408,  461,  462,  472.  475,  500, 

501,  510. 
Hooge,  Pieter  de,  388. 
Hovenden,  Thomas,  501,  502. 
Howe,  W.  H.,  505. 
Hubbard,  R.  W.,  254. 
Hunt,  William  M.,  298,  308- 

316   et   seq.,    321-323,    34i, 

376,  542  et  seq. 
Huntington,  Daniel,    281-287 

et  seq.,2<)\,  308,  514,  530. 

Ingham,  C.  C,  192,  198,  199, 
200,  344. 

Ingres,  J.  A.  D.,  336,  363. 

Inman,  Henry,  144,  147,  179- 
182,  186,  191-192,  198-201, 
208,  214,  271,  272,  276,  282, 
292. 

Inness,  George,  231,  232,  236, 
254-266  et  seq.,  288,  298, 
314,  341,  355,  361,  362,  368, 
369, 372,  390,  440.  444  et  seq. 

Inness,  Jr.,  George,  444,  445. 

Jarvis,   J.    W.,  142-148,    152, 

157,  164,  175,  180,  186,  200, 

271,  272. 
Jewett,  William,  141,  171,  192. 
Jocelyn,  291. 
Johnson,  Eastman,  298,  341- 

343,  346,  350-352,  502,  514- 
Johnston,  J.  Humphreys,  327, 

483,  484. 
Jones,  F.  C,  479. 
Jones,  H.  Bolton,  443,  444. 
Jouett,  Matthew,  176. 

Kauffman,  Angelica,  151. 
Kaulbach,  W.  von,  292-297  et 

seq.,  363.  540. 
Keller.  Arthur  I.,  510. 
Kendall,  Sergeant,  504. 


Kensett,    John    F.,    232-254, 
262,  291,  341,  440,  443,  539- 
Kilburn,  Laurence,  ly  et  seq. 
King,  Charles    B.,    138,    141, 

153,  154- 
Knaus,  Ludwig,  295. 
Kneller,  Sir  Godfrey,  18,  23. 
Knight,  D.  Ridgway,  404. 
Koopman,  A.,  417. 

Kost,  F.  W.,  462. 
Krimmel,  175. 

La  Farge.  John,  298,  315-341, 
350,  368,  372,  390,  444,  461, 
484,  510,  522,  529,  541,  542, 
553,  556  et  seq. 

Lalanne,  290. 

Lambdin,  J.  R.,  539. 

Lang,  Louis,  291,  296. 

Lathrop,  Francis,  327. 368,  372, 
390,  541,  559. 

Lathrop,  W.  L.,  458-461. 

Latour,  M.  Q.  de,  530. 

Lawrence,  Sir  Thomas,  158, 
186,  204,  217. 

Le  Clear,  Thomas,  276.  277. 

Lefebvre,  J.  J.,  364,  525. 

Legros,  Alphonse,  333. 

Lely,  Sir  Peter,  18,  57. 

Le  Moyne,  Jacques,  5,  7. 

Leslie,  C.  R.,  62,  63,  121-125, 

154,  158,200,307,427. 
Leslie,  G.  D..  124. 

vLeutze,    Emanuel,    292,    341, 

344,  502.  540. 
Lie,  Jonas,  506. 
Liotard,  23. 
Lippi,  Filippo.  560. 
Lockwood,  Wilton,  327,   522, 

529. 
Loeb,  Louis,  480,  483. 
Loop,  Henry  A.,  349. 
Lorraine,  Claude,  229,  230. 
Low,  Will  H.,  327,  364,  368, 

389-  555- 
Lyman,  Joseph,  440. 

MacMonnies,  F.  W.,  404. 
MacMonnies,  Mrs.  404,  547. 
McEntee,  Jervis,  232,  236,  245, 

254. 
McEwen,   Walter,    404,    408, 

544- 


Major.  475. 

Malbone,  108-113,  119,  144. 

Manet,  Edouard,  333, 338,  388, 

401,410^/ j-fi^., 432, 461,  506. 
Marr,  Carl,  363,  377,  378. 
Marsiglio,  Gerlando,  192,  199, 

200. 
Martin,  Homer  D.,  232,  240, 

255-267  et  seq.,  298, 314,341, 

361,  372,  440.  454. 
Matteson,  Tompkins,  301. 
Maurer,  A.  H.,  417. 
Mauve,  A.,  496. 
Maverick,  Peter,  192,  214,  232. 
May,  E.  H.,  298,  308,  309.  314, 

316. 
Mayer,  Constant,  296. 
Maynard,   G.    W.,    363,    368. 

387,  541,  547. 
Meissonier,  J.  L.  E.,  256,  257, 

360,  368. 
Melchers,  G.,  408.  418,  544. 
Mengs,  Raphael,  48,  no,  117. 
Metcalf,  W.  L.,  453,  454. 
Meyer  von  Bremen,  J.  G.,  343. 
Michael    Angelo,   Buonarroti, 

48,  244,  301,  467. 
Mignot,  L.  R.,  232,  239,  252. 
Millais,  Sir  John,  317. 
Miller,  C.  H.,  445. 
Millet,  F.   D.,  363,  368,  387, 

418-420,  541,  544,  547. 
Millet,   J.    F.,   308,  310,  313, 

360,  364,  369,  375,  388,  410, 

450,  493-495- 
Minor,  R.  C,  363,  387,   445, 

446. 
Monet,  Claude,  265,  388,  401, 

410,  450  et  seq. 
Monticelli,  Adolphe,  394. 
Moore,  Charles,  253. 
Moran,  Thomas,  232,  252,  372. 
Morse,  S.  F.  B.,  76,  120,  125- 

130,  138,  154,  191-198,  200, 

208,  278,  282,  287,  288. 
Moreelse,  Paulus,  229. 
Mosler,  Henry,  298. 
Mount,  W.  S.,  204-208,  291, 

342. 
Mowbray,    H.    Siddons,    479, 

555- 
Muhrman,  Henry,  378. 
Mulvaney,  John,  383. 


HISTORY    OF   AMERICAN    PAIN  TING 


Munkacsy.  M..  407. 
.Murphy.  J.  F..  448.  449.  458, 
Myers.  Jerome,  506. 

Neagle.  John.  175-179.  217. 
Neal.  David.  363.  368.  yrj. 
Nettleton,  Walter,  461. 
Newman.  Henry.  253.    ■ 
Newton.    Gilbert    Stuart,    79, 

124.  200. 
Nicoll.  J.  C.  440. 

Oakey.  Miss,  372. 
Oakley,  Miss  Violet.  510. 
Ochtman.  L..  454,  457. 
Ostade.  Adriaan  van.  205. 
Otis.  Bass.  175,  176,  292. 

Page.  William.  287-290  et  seq., 

297,  298,  559. 
Pahiier,  W.  L.,  440.  443,  449. 
Paradise.  John  W.,  192. 
Parisen.  J..  193.  200. 
Parissien.  68. 
Parrish,  Maxfield.  510. 
Pasini.  A.,  349. 
Paul,  Jeremiah,  142. 
Peale,  Anna  Claypoole,  113. 
Peale.  Charles  W.,  24,  67-72, 

76,  113,  125,  138,   143,   176, 

185,  187. 
Peale,  James,  113. 
Peale,  Raphael,  113. 
Peale,  Rembrandt.  72,  89,  119, 

125-126,  138,  185,  193,  200, 

203. 
Peale,  Sara  M.,  113. 
Pearce,  C  S.,  404.  554. 
Pelham,  Peter,  20.  33. 
Pelouse,  L.  G.,  267. 
Petticolas,  Edward  F.,  175. 
Picknell,  W.  L.,  450. 
Picot,  F.  E..  301. 
Piloty,  C.  T.  von,  383. 
Pissarro.  Camille,  265. 
Piatt,  C.  A.,  453- 
Poore,  H.  R.,  505. 
Porter.  B.  C,  522,  530. 
Potter.  Edward,  192. 
Potthast,  E.  H..  461. 
Poussin,  Nicolas,  290. 
Pratt,    Matthew,   64-67,    142, 

143.  153- 


Prellwitz.  E.  M..  476. 
Prellwitz,  Henry.  476. 
Prendergast.  M.  B..  506. 
Puvis  de  Chavannes,  P.,  317, 

401.  547. 
Pyle,  Howard.  503,  504. 

Raeburn.  Sir  Henry,  129. 
Ramage.  John.  73.  113. 
Ranger,  H.  W.,  447,  449. 
Raphael    Sanzio,   44,   48,    59, 

208,  301,  367,  438,  539. 
Redfield,  E.  W.,  461. 
Rehn.  F.  K.  M.,  462. 
Reid,  Robert,  453,  472,   473. 

475.  544-556.  559- 
Reinagle,  Hugh,  192,  200. 
Reinhart,  C.  S.,  544. 
Rembrandt  van  Ryn,  23,  218. 

424.  438. 
Remington,  Frederic,  501. 
, Reynolds,  Sir  Joshua,  2>7i  38, 

51-53-55-58,60-62,86,  158. 

188.  217,  247,  271,  285,  427, 

438- 
Rice,  W.  M.  J.,  522. 
Richards,   T.    Addison,    232, 

243- 
Richards,  W.  T.,  232, 236,  243- 

244,  253,  461. 
Rico,  Martin,  493. 
Robert-Fleury,  Tony,  364. 
Robertson,  Archibald,  114. 
Robinson,  Archibald,  187,  191. 
Robinson,  Theodore,  453. 
Robinson,  W.  S.,  447. 
Rodel,  350. 

Rogers,  Nathaniel,  193. 
Rosa,  Salvator,  226. 
Rose,  George,  541. 
Rosenthal,  T.  E.,  363, 377, 378. 
/Rossetti,  G.  C.  D.,  317,  390. 
Rossiter,  Thomas  P.,  236,  291. 
Rothermel,  P.  F..  291,  292. 
Rousseau,  Theodore,  166,  308, 

446,447,454.461. 
Rubens,  P.  P.,  339,  432,  438. 
Ruysdael,  J.  van,  258. 
Ryder,  Albert,  372,  390,  394, 

446,  476. 

Sargent.  J.  S.,  364,  416.  428- 
438,522,  530.  534.  547^/i-6Y. 


Sartain.  William.  368,  387,  388. 

Schofield,  E.  W.,  461. 

Schreyvogle,  Charles,  501. 

Schrodter,  A..  209. 

Scott,  Julian,  502. 

Sears,  Mrs.  Sarah  C,  509. 

Sewell,  Mrs.,  547. 

Sewell,  R.  V.  V.,  555. 

Shannon,  J.  J.,  427. 

Sherwood,  Mrs.,  547. 

Shirlaw,  Walter,  363,  371,  382 
et  seq.,  445,  544. 

Shurtleff,  R.  M.,  267. 

Simmons.  E.  E.,  544,  553-560. 

Simon,  L..  417. 

Sisley,  Alfred,  265. 

Smedley,  W.  T.,  499,  500. 

Smillie,  George  H.,  268. 

Smillie,  James,  226,  268,  387. 

Smillie.  James  D.,  268,  269. 

Smith.  De  Cost.  501. 

.Smith,  F.  Hopkinson,  510. 

Smith,  Miss  Jessie  Wilcox, 
510. 

Smith.  John  R..  246. 

Smith.  S.  L..  541. 

Smybert.  John.  13-18,  20,  33, 
38.  108.  213. 

Snell,  H.  B.,  448.  449. 

Steen,  Jan,  205. 

Sterner,  Albert.  510. 

Stewart,  J.  L.,  404,  499. 

Story,  Julian,  407,  522. 

Stuart,  Gilbert.  72,  73,  76-98, 
102,  107,  113,  114,  119,  124, 
125,  138,  142,  147,  148  et 
seq.,  200,  266,  275.  277,  534. 

Stuart,  Miss.  277. 

Sully,  Lawrence,  151. 

Sully.  Thomas,  56,  73,  84, 
144,  148-159,  164,  175  et 
seq.,   271,    277,    278. 

Taber,  E.  M.,  443,  461. 

Tait,  J.  F.,  349- 

Tanner,  H.  O.,  417. 

Tarbell.  E.  C,  472,  473,  500. 

Terburg,  G.,  492. 

Thayer,  A.  H.,  364.  372,  472, 

492,  506,  509,  553. 
Theriat.  C.  J.,  408. 
Theus,  17. 
Thevet,  7. 


INDEX 


573 


Thompson,  Wordsworth.  349. 
Thornhill,  Sir  James,  14. 
Tiepolo.  G.  B..  114. 
Tiffany,  Louis,  372,  444. 
Titian,  30,   38,  208,  218,  322, 

367.  424,  432. 
Tocque,  Louis,  530. 
Toulmouche,  A.,  361.  518. 
Town,  Ithiel,  192. 
Trego,  W.  B.  T.,  503. 
Trott,  Benjamin,  113,  1^2,  154. 
Troyon,  C,  307,  308,  368,  493- 

496. 
Truml:)ull,  John,    23,  24,    72- 

74.  85-107  et  seq.,  130,  152, 

186   ct   sfq.,    217,    271-273, 

282,  287,  366. 
Tryon,  D.  W.,  454-457.  476, 

483- 
Turner.  C.  Y..  544,  555. 
Turner,  J.  M.  VV.,    117,  229, 

230.  244,  252.  261. 
Twachtman,  J.  H.,  389,  453. 

Uh'ich.  C.  F..  501. 

Van  Boskerck.  R.  W..  444. 
Van   Dyck,  Sir  Anthony,   23, 

3O'  34.  57- 
Van  Eyck,  Jan,  461,  492. 


V^m  Ingen,  W.  B.,    554. 
Van  der  Weyden,  Harry,  417. 
Vanderlyn,  104-120,  125-134, 

185,  193,  217,  271,464. 
Vedder,  Elihu,  298,  301-304, 

315'  553-555  '^^  ^'^9- 
Velasquez,  336,  339,  424,  438, 

526. 
Vermeer,  Jan,  500. 
Verrio,  14. 
Vinton,   F.  P.,  363.  475,   522, 

526. 
Volk,  Douglas,  501,  504. 
Vonnot,  Robert.  364. 

Wagner,  383. 

Waldo,  Samuel,  138,  141,  171, 

187.  192,  198,  214,  217. 
Walker,  Horatio,  492-496,  510. 
Walker,  H.  O.,  504,  554,  555. 
Wall,  William  G.,  192,  199. 
Ward,  Edgar  M.,  501. 
Watson,  John,  13. 
Weeks,  E.  L.,  408,  409. 
Weir,  J.  Alden,  364,  368,  388, 

389,  453,  544. 
Weir,  John  F.,  loi,  345,  346. 
Weir,  Robert  W.,  329,  345. 
West,    Benjamin,    18,   24-26, 

33,  37-104 '-^  ^^V-,  213,  247, 


271,  285,  286,  334,  522.538, 

562. 
Whistler,  James  A.  McN.,289, 

298,  316-341,  355,  378,  384, 

390,  394,  416,  428,  438,  453, 

461,   488,' 493,    506,   547   ei 

si'q . 
Whittredge,  Worthington,  232, 

236,    244-247    el  st-q.,    267, 

268,  341. 
Wiggins,  Carleton,  447. 
Wiles,  Irving  R.,  479,  522. 
Williams,  F.  B.,  447. 
Williams,  William,  y;^. 
Wilson,  D.  W.,  193. 
Wilson,  Richard,  57. 
Winterhalter,  F.  X.,  276. 
With,  Joannes,  6. 
Wood,  Joseph,  143,  144. 
Wood,  T.  W.,  343. 
Woodbury,  C.  H.,  462. 
Woodville,  R.  Caton,  205,  291, 

292. 
Woolaston,  68. 
Wright,  Joseph,  74. 
Wyant,  A.  H.,  232,  236,  255, 

261-262  e/  seq.,  444. 
Wylie,  Robert,  298. 

Yvon,  387. 


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